Lt. Gen. Nirbhay Sharma (Retd), Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, has been appointed the new Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, a strategic border State in the North East.
Lt. Gen. Nirbhay Sharma (Retd), Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, has been appointed the new Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, a strategic border State in the North East.
Lt. Gen. Sharma, who has been working with ORF since January last year, will take charge later this month.
He was given a warm farewell on Monday, 20 May. ORF Director Sunjoy Joshi and Hony Secretary Baljit Kapoor remembered how Lt Gen Sharma had effectively guided the organisation’s defence programmes.
Lt. Gen. Sharma said though he is leaving a cosy job at the national Capital and going again to the hills as was in his service days, he is happy to take up this challenging job in the strategically important border State.
Lt Gen Sharma is a post graduate in Military Science and an MPhil in Defence Studies from the Madras University.
He is one of the most distinguished and decorated Field Commanders of the Indian Army. Most of his assignments have dealt with the J&K and North Eastern States. His last assignment was as Corps Commander and Security Advisor to the Government of J&K. During the period, his landmark contribution in fighting the ongoing proxy war in Kashmir, and also in the successful conduct of Parliamentary and Assembly elections in the State, are well known.
In the 1971 War, Lt. Gen. Sharma was a part of the Airborne Assault Group, the first Indian Army Unit to enter Dhaka.
Apart from commanding a battalion on the China border, he was also part of the Sino-Indian Working Group and coordinated counter-insurgency operations in the North East with civil agencies and inter-ministerial delegations.
It was during this period that the peace process with Naga rebels began. Close interaction with the representatives of the armies and governments of Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh for effective border management and formulation of joint strategies to combat militancy, anti-national/ criminal/ hijacking activities and disaster management were also part of his charter. Earlier, he had also commanded a battalion on the China border.
Lt. Gen. Sharma had earlier also served as a Member of the Union Public Service Commission.
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