Ajay Prakash Sawhney (born 4 February 1962) is a retired 1984 batch

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the Public administration, administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. The IAS is one of the three All India Services along with the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian ...

(IAS) officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre. He has served as the

Secretary to the Government of India Secretary to the Government of India, often abbreviated as Secretary, GoI, or simply as Secretary, is a post and a rank under the Central Staffing Scheme of the Government of India. The authority for the creation of this post solely rests with ...

, at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Education

Mr. Ajay Sawhney studied Engineering in the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE)

Career

Sawhney has served in various key positions for both the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...

and the governments of his cadre. Between 1999 and 2005, as Special officer for

IIIT Hyderabad The International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-Hyderabad or IIIT-H) is a premier deemed university, founded as a non-profit public-private partnership (N-PPP), located in Hyderabad, India. It is the first IIIT in India ...

and Secretary IT for the state government, Ajay Prakash Sawhney came to the limelight through his success in shaping the conceptual model and development of IIIT Hyderabad. As secretary, IT, at Department of Information Technology in the Andhra Pradesh State Government, he was also credited for roping in large amounts of investment from firms such as Microsoft, Wipro, TCS leading up to an era of unprecedented growth in the IT infrastructure of Hyderabad. During the period 2010 to 2012, when Ajay was appointed the CEO of the National e-Governance Division, he laid the initial groundwork for building the

Aadhaar Aadhaar (Hindi: आधार, ) is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India, based on their biometrics and demography, demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification ...

card system and also integrating digital payments in government portals and schemes such as

BHIM BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is an Indian state-owned mobile payment app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Launched on 30 December 2016, it is intended to fa ...

and UPI. He was on also given the additional charge of the post of Secretary, Department of Telecommunications till 14 October 2018.

Secretary -IT

Ajay Sawhney was appointed as the

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) is an executive agency of the Government of India, Union Government of the India, Republic of India. It was carved out of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (I ...

. His work on National Policy on electronics was a starting stone for Electronics reforms in this sector. He has been vocal about right usage of

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

channels in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. His initial work in 2010-2012 as the CEO of the national e-governance programme had served as the starting point for formulation of the Aadhar card system and digital payments in government portals and schemes. As

, he has formulated policies that have led to exponential growth in digital payments in India. He has widely been credited for playing a major role in easing policy and encouraging the digital India initiative and the make in India initiative through policy reform, this has helped transform India into an electronics manufacturing hub for the largest mobile and consumer electronics companies of the world.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sawhney, Ajay Prakash 1962 births Living people Indian Administrative Service officers Indian government officials People from Delhi