Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia to retire on November 30; Aadhaar CEO likely replacement

Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday announced that Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia will retire from the post at the end of November. Adhia served as Finance Secretary for three years. As per reports, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey will replace Adhia as the new Finance Secretary.

In a Facebook post titled ‘Dr Hasmukh Adhia retires’, Jaitley wrote, “He was unquestionably a highly competent, disciplined, no-nonsense civil servant and of course, with impeccable integrity.”

The minister said that the government wanted Adhia to handle some other responsibilities but he denied citing family reasons.

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“He (Adhia) had informed me earlier this year that he would not work for a single day after 30 November 2018. His time thereafter belongs to his favourite passion and, of course, his son,” the Finance Minister wrote, adding that his only diversion from duties was his passion for spirituality and yoga.

Adhia was appointed as secretary in the Department of Financial Services in November 2014 after Narendra More took over the power. He is a 1981-batch Gujarat cadre officer of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS).

Jaitley gave Adhia and his team credit for timely implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and said that the tax base and tax realisation saw an “exponential increase” during his tenure as Finance Secretary.

“It was his efforts supported by his team of officers of Centre and state governments, which made it possible to hit the deadline of July 1, 2017. Rate reductions and smoothening of the rough edges were also achieved in a record time,” Jaitley wrote in his post.

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Jaitley further added that his tenure as revenue secretary will be remembered for his bureaucratic leadership in policy implementation and his campaign against black money within and outside the country.