Senior-Most FinMin Officer Ajay Seth Is Now Finance Secretary
The post of Finance Secretary was lying vacant after senior IAS officer of 1987-batch from Odisha cadre, Tuhin K Pandey took over as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last month
Mar 26, 2025, 05:40 IST
On March 24, 2025, the government issued an order designating Ajay Seth, the senior most bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance, as the new Finance Secretary.
The Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) notified, “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the proposal for designating Shri Ajay Seth, IAS (KN:87), Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance as Finance Secretary.”
Seth, a 1987 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Karnataka cadre, is currently holding the post of Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs and is also holding additional charge of Revenue Secretary.
The vacancy for the post of Finance Secretary arose after senior IAS officer of 1987-batch from Odisha cadre, Tuhin K Pandey, was shifted from the Ministry and was appointed the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last month.
While designating Seth as the Finance Secretary the government followed the rule of selecting the senior-most Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, officials said. He took over as the Secretary, DEA (Department of Economic Affairs), in April 2021.
Seth was given the additional charge of the Secretary of the Department of Revenue on December 10 last year as part of the internal reallocation of responsibilities. There was an urgency to find a replacement for Sanjay Malhotra, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, who was appointed the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Seth holds a BTech degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA.
Seth's role will be scrutinised with a fine tooth-comb, especially at a time when challenges both in domestic as well as global economic dynamics have multiplied in the last few months.
The Donald Trump administration’s threat of reciprocal tariffs leading to an all-out trade war amid global recessionary trends has added to the worries of Indian policymakers. For India, which recorded a 6.2 per cent GDP growth in the third quarter of the current financial year, sagging exports and falling private investments among other have started to severely hurt the economy.
In February, exports fell by 10.9 per cent. That apart, private investments have been slowing. According to a report by ICRA, in 2024, the share of private capital expenditure in the Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) dropped to 33 per cent – the lowest in a decade.