New Delhi, Jan. 25: P. Chidambaram’s internal security adviser and Intelligence Bureau veteran K.C. Verma is set to become the new RAW chief, officials said today.

“The order is not out yet, but yes, it is on the way,” a senior home ministry official said about Verma, who will only be the second IB hand to become the head of RAW. A.S. Dulat was the IB sleuth appointed to the post before him.

Verma, who has three decades of IB experience, appears to have pulled ahead of three contenders, all from RAW, which is the country’s external intelligence agency.

Verma, a 1975-batch IPS officer of the Jharkhand cadre, will take over from February 1. The current RAW chief, Ashok Chaturvedi, retires at the end of this month.

P.V. Kumar, whose appointment was being talked about as “certain” only two days ago, Rana Banerjee and Sanjeev Tripathi were the three contenders from RAW.

After his IB stint, Verma was appointed the head of the Narcotics Control Bureau in 2005 before being promoted as secretary (security) in the cabinet secretariat. Home minister Chidambaram last month assigned him the additional responsibility of being his internal security advisor, sources in the home ministry said.

A former RAW chief believed Verma was a better “sleuth” than the others in the race. “We used to say in the organisation that we need to focus on our neighbourhood. That is not happening,” he said, suggesting Verma could accomplish such unfinished tasks.

Verma is expected to prepare the agency for more complex security challenges that have come up after the November 26-29 Mumbai attacks.