New Delhi: Sujatha Singh is an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer of the 1976 batch.

She has served in various positions at the Indian embassies at Bonn, Accra, Paris, Bangkok and was India’s Consul general in Milan from 2000 to 2004. She has also served as India’s High Commissioner to Australia (2007—2012).

In Delhi, she has served on the Ministry’s Economic Co-ordination Unit and dealt with Nepal, West Europe and the European Union (EU) as director, undersecretary and joint secretary.

Her tenure as high commissioner to Australia was marked by turbulence in Indo-Australian ties following racial attacks on Indian students and later by the Australian Labour Party’s decision to make an exception for India regarding the sale of uranium.

She has a reputation for toughness, volunteering as a liaison officer on a rain-hit Kailash Manasarovar Yatra in 1983, taking a tough stance with the Australian authorities on dealing with the racial attacks against Indians there, and, as joint secretary handling Western Europe, she advocated India’s stance of not accepting prescriptive aid from small European Union nations.

Born in July 1954, Singh is the daughter of the former Intelligence Bureau chief and, later, Governor T.V. Rajeswar. She is an alumnus of the Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi and the Delhi School of Economics from where she graduated in economics. She is married to Sanjay Singh, who is a retired Indian Foreign Service officer.

In 2013, Singh was chosen as foreign secretary over S. Jaishankar who was serving as India’s Ambassador to United States as the senior-most officer in the service.

She has never served in any of India’s neighbouring nations which is seen as a challenge. Singh was the third lady officer to head the Indian diplomatic corps after Chokila Iyer and Nirupama Rao. A fluent German speaker, her term as foreign secretary was scheduled to end in August 2015. However, it was cut short by a government order on January 28, 2015.

She still had eight months to go before her tenure as foreign secretary ended

She has been succeeded by S. Jaishankar, who last served as Indian Ambassador to United States, and apparently played a key role during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US and US President Barack Obama’s visit to India.

So far, Singh has not been given any other assignment by the government. She is not the first foreign secretary to be removed. Earlier, A.P. Venkateswaran had been removed from the post by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had made the announcement during a press conference. It had led to a huge controversy and a strong protest by the Foreign Service.