KC Verma moves in as new chief of RAW

KC Verma, the internal security advisor to home minister P Chidambaram, will be the next chief of country's external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), sidelining in-house contenders.
     
Verma, a 1971-batch Jharkhand cadre officer will take over the responsibility after the tenure of the incumbent Ashok Chaturvedi comes to an end on January 31, official sources said.
     
59-year-old Verma would be an outsider in the RAW which saw three contenders -- P V Kumar, Rana Banerjee and Sanjeev Tripathi in the race -- running for the race, the sources said.
    
Verma, after spending three decades in Intelligence Bureau, was appointed as the head of the Narcotics Control Bureau in 2005, before being elevated as Secretary (Security) in the Cabinet Secretariat.
    
Home minister P Chidambaram had last month assigned him the additional responsibility of being his internal security advisor, sources added.