New Delhi, Jan. 14: The former Indian ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, is believed to be the lead pick for the job of national security adviser (NSA), with M.K. Narayanan likely to be sent to a Raj Bhavan, most likely in Calcutta.
For the record, top officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) maintained silence on reports that Narayanan’s exit was on the cards.
Sources have indicated that two of Sen’s service colleagues — Shyam Saran and Shiv Shankar Menon, both former foreign secretaries —are also in consideration but maintained that Sen’s vast international experience and depth of confidence with UPA bosses made him a frontrunner.
Saran is already the Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change, a heavy-duty beat on which he has developed expertise. Menon went into a rather clouded retirement over the alleged “bungling” in the drafting of the joint Indo-Pakistan statement at Sharm-al-Sheikh.
Sen is said to enjoy the personal trust of both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. He was made ambassador to Washington soon after the UPA came to power in 2004, and was asked by Prime Minister Singh to stay on as envoy beyond his term specifically in order to see his favourite project — the Indo-US nuclear deal — through.
Sen returned home at the expiry of his extended Washington assignment in early April and has been in low-profile retirement since. All the same, the Prime Minister is believed to have constantly tapped him on key issues, the most recent being the groundwork for Bangladeshi Premier Sheikh Hasina’s rousing India visit.
Narayanan’s departure from the NSA’s office has been in the works for a while. Although he claims to have played a major role in negotiating the nuclear deal, the former IB boss is widely seen as purely an internal security man somewhat lacking perspective and vision on diplomatic and strategic matters.
The decision on his new assignment as Bengal governor is likely to be announced shortly with the appointment on new governors for several key states, including Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Assam.
Since P. Chidambaram took over as home minister last winter, Narayanan’s influence and utilities as an internal security expert appear to have steadily shrunk; Chidambaram has proved a big-plate home minister, leading the work agenda on everything from counter-terrorism to the Naxalite challenge.
In the circumstances, sources said, the Prime Minister has been keen on appointing an NSA who is an experienced foreign policy hand plugged into his vision of India’s growing role in the world. The gubernatorial vacancies may come handy in affording Narayanan a respectable exit.
It is no surprise that all three men shortlisted for the NSA’s job are top foreign policy hands. Sen, it has been argued, fits the bill better than the other two not only on account of his experience, which ranges from Soviet Russia to the present-day US, but also because of the trust he enjoys with the current establishment.
