Ajay Bhushan Pandey takes charge new Revenue Secretary

New Delhi: UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey took over as the new Revenue Secretary, replacing Hasmukh Adhia who retired on Friday.

As Revenue Secretary, Adhia`s term witnessed the introduction of a nationwide indirect tax egime, evolving a Centre-states consensus on the multiple GST laws and drafting the rules and fixing tariffs that made it possible to meet the deadline of July 1, 2017 for the GST roll-out, Jaitley said.

Pandey, a 1984-batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre will continue to head the Unique Identification authority of India (UIDAI) as its CEO and will also hold his position as the Chairman of GSTN.

Speaking to the media, Pandey said that his priorities among others would be to help government improve Tax–GDP ratio, enhance tax compliance through integration of technology, stabilize the implementation of GST, bring transparency and simplification of laws and procedures for better tax administration and ease of business.

Prior to joining UIDAI in 2010, Pandey played an important role in reforming power distribution system as Managing Director of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company where he brought down transmission and distribution losses remarkably and helped the state in tiding over massive power shortage. Also, during his tenure as Principal Secretary, Information Technology in Maharashtra, he contributed significantly in driving many key e-Governance projects. Early in his career, he had also headed Enforcement Division of Maharashtra Sales Tax department.

An Electrical Engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur, he joined the University of Minnesota in 1998 to obtain his MS and PhD in Computer Science and was later awarded Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals by the University of Minnesota for his outstanding leadership accomplishments in his professional career.