Ashok Kumar, currently serving as a High Commission of India, Lusaka, Zambia, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Belarus, according to a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs.
Ashok Kumar is expected to take up the assignment shortly, further added in the statement.
Ashok Kumar, who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1998, began his diplomatic career at the Embassy of India in Syria from 2000 to 2003, where he learned Arabic and served as Second Secretary. He then moved to the Consulate General of India in Jeddah in 2004, managing the Commercial and Community Welfare Departments.
In 2006, he returned to New Delhi, serving as Deputy Secretary in the East and Southern Africa Division, where he was given responsibility to handle EAC, COMESA and SADC and development cooperation projects. Later, he moved to the Integrated Finance Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, further added in the statement.
Kumar’s subsequent ovesrseas assignment was in the Embassy of India, Berlin where he served as First Secretary and Counsellor (Economic and Commerce) from 2009 to 2013. He was appointed as Deputy High Commissioner to the High Commission of India, Mauritius in 2013 and he served till 2017.
Following his diplomatic tenure in Mauritius, Ashok Kumar returned to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, where he served as Joint Secretary for Hindi and Sanskrit from 2018 to 2019. During this period, he was appointed as India’s first resident Ambassador to Djibouti, where he was entrusted with the responsibility to establish the mission. He was also assinged the additional responsibility to supervise the Embassy of India in Sana’a and its Camp office in Djibouti.
over his nearly 23 years in Indian Foreign Service, he has managed various important assignments and responsibilities, notably his association with Ist and IInd India-Africa Forum Summits held in New Delhi (2008) and in Addis Ababa (2011) and also in organization of the 10th and 11th World Hindi Conferences held in Bhopal (2015) and Mauritius (2018).
Kumar is an alumnus of the University of Delhi, where he earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Geology, an MSc in Applied Geology, and an MPhil in Engineering Geology.