The government has appointed Rajiv Bansal as the new Chairman and Managing Director of Air India.

Bansal will replace Ashwani Lohani, who was appointed as Air India CMD on Feb 13, 2019, on a contract basis for a one-year tenure. This was Lohani’s second tenure as the head of Air India.

Interestingly, Bansal will take over the reins of Air India for the second time from Ashwani Lohani. In Aug 2017, he was appointed as the interim-Chairman and Managing Director of Air India for a tenure of three months and replaced Ashwani Lohani, who was serving his first term as CMD of Air India.

A civil engineer from IIT Delhi, Bansal is an Indian Administrative Service officer of 1988 batch. He is currently serving as an Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

He was earlier in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) where he was looking after digital payments, IT Act, Aadhaar, and internet governance. He has also worked as Secretary, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), Joint Secretary, Department of Heavy Industries, Government of India and Director, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. He has also earlier been on the board of BHEL, NACIL, AYCL, Alliance Air, HMT, and GITA.

Rajiv Bansal also has a Diploma in Finance from ICFAI, Hyderabad and executive masters in International Business from IIFT, New Delhi.

First Published:Feb 13, 2020 8:23 PM IST