Union MoS (I/C) DoNER, MoS (PP) Dr Jitendra Singh today presided over the 317^th Executive Council meeting of the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) as its new Chairman.

Pertinent to mention that the post of Chairman IIPA had fallen vacant after the demise of T N Chaturvedi, a 1949 batch IAS officer, former Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India and former Governor, who had taken over as Chairman of the IIPA in 2004 and continued to hold this position for sixteen years till his death on 5th January 2020.

The proceedings of the Executive Council meeting today were conducted by S N Tripathi, former Secretary in Government of India and presently Director IIPA, who has been hereafter re-designated as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the IIPA.

Among the members of the Executive Council who attended the meeting were Amitab Kant CEO NITI Aayog, ShekharDutt former Governor Chhattisgarh, Professor Raj Kumar Vice Chancellor Punjab University, Professor G B Prasad Vice Chancellor Tripura University, Dr G Kurup Secretary Kerala Regional IIPA Branch, Vijay Satbir Singh Secretary Maharashtra IIPA Regional Branch, S C Mishra Chairman Odisha IIPA Regional Branch, K K Pandey Professor IIPA, RashmiChoudhary Additional Secretary Department of Personnel & Training (DoP&T), V. Padmanabhan Deputy Secretary Department of Expenditure and Amitabh Ranjan, Registrar IIPA.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh expressed his thanks to the Executive Council Members for having entrusted him with the responsibility of the Chairman of IIPA and hoped that with their support and guidance he will be able to do his best and live up to their expectations.

In his first Executive Council Meeting after taking over as Chairman, Dr Jitendra Singh made the important announcement that the Life Membership of IIPA will be thrown open w.e.f. 1st January 2021. He also called upon more number of serving officers to take up the membership of IIPA and noted that the government service rules do not forbid a serving official to become a member of IIPA.

Appreciating the hard work of IIPA faculty and officials, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the best evidence of their commitment and diligence came out during the difficult times of COVID pandemic when IIPA established a digital classroom for conducting online classes and did not allow the curriculum to be disrupted. He said, it is not a small achievement that IIPA conducted as many as 14 online training programmes for officers from different services during the lockdown and post-lockdown period. Not only this, 62 Research Projects were also completed during the last one year in spite of the COVID constraints, he said.

Dr Jitendra Singh hoped that various State Branches and Chapters of the IIPA will also take a cue and extend their programmes through both virtual and semi-virtual means. He also suggested collaboration with more number of Universities and Academic bodies in order to widen the spectrum and range of IIPA curriculum.

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SNC