AK Joti is Gujarat’s new chief secretary

The suspense over who would be the next chief secretary of Gujarat ended on Thursday after chief minister Narendra Modi appointed the most senior IAS officer of the state, Achal Kumar Joti, to the post. Sinha, who is, currently, additional chief secretary, general administration department (personnel), succeeds D Rajagopalan who retired as chief secretary on December 31.
Joti, 56, will be the chief secretary of the state till 2013 and will probably be the longest serving CS of Gujarat. A native of Punjab, Joti was 22 when he joined the civil service in 1975 as a Gujarat cadre IAS officer.

“My priority as chief secretary of the state will be to ensure 100% achievement of ‘Gujarat Swarnim Jayanti Sopan and Sidhhis’ (Gujarat’s golden jubilee goals and achievements),” he said in an exclusively interview with DNA. “These goals are important as they cover all departments of the government and have a direct bearing on human development index (HDI) of the state.”