Mohit Kumar Aggarwal Selected as Deputy Secretary, Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry

Mohit Kumar Aggarwal, a 2015-batch officer of the Indian Telecom Service, has been selected for appointment as Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas under the Central Staffing Scheme, for a tenure of four years, according to the order clearing his central deputation.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas oversees upstream and downstream oil and gas policy, LPG distribution schemes such as Ujjwala Yojana, and regulation of city gas distribution networks through the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board. A Deputy Secretary in the ministry typically manages a specific policy vertical, coordinating between state-run oil marketing companies, private sector players, and the regulatory board on implementation matters ranging from pipeline approvals to LPG connection targets in underserved districts. The ministry's LPG connectivity push under Ujjwala Yojana also requires periodic review of cylinder refill rates among beneficiary households, data the Deputy Secretary's office tracks alongside connection numbers.

Aggarwal's background is in the Indian Telecom Service, a Group A central service whose officers typically work on telecommunications policy, spectrum management, and network licensing before moving to central deputation assignments outside the telecom domain. His move to the petroleum ministry places him in an energy-sector policy role distinct from his service's core telecom mandate, a cross-domain assignment increasingly common under the Central Staffing Scheme as ministries look beyond generalist cadres to fill scheme-heavy postings.

Officers from technical and engineering services such as the Indian Telecom Service are regularly empanelled for Central Staffing Scheme postings in ministries where domain expertise in networks, infrastructure, or regulatory design carries over, even when the sector itself differs. The petroleum ministry's expanding city gas distribution and LPG connectivity programmes require exactly this kind of infrastructure-rollout coordination experience that telecom network rollout postings tend to build.

Central deputation postings for Indian Telecom Service officers into non-telecom economic ministries have grown more frequent in recent staffing cycles, reflecting a wider pool of empanelled officers being drawn into Joint Secretary and Deputy Secretary-level vacancies across departments handling large infrastructure rollouts, a trend the Department of Personnel and Training has actively encouraged to address staffing shortfalls in economic ministries. Deputy Secretaries handling infrastructure verticals in the ministry typically spend a significant part of their tenure travelling to project sites to review pipeline and distribution network progress alongside desk-based policy work.

The ministry is currently overseeing an expansion of city gas distribution licences and monitoring LPG cylinder penetration under Ujjwala Yojana in rural and semi-urban districts, work that depends on close coordination between the ministry, the regulatory board, and state governments on connection targets and last-mile distribution infrastructure. The regulatory board has also been reviewing tariff structures for city gas distribution networks, a parallel workstream the ministry monitors closely given its bearing on retail gas prices.

The Central Staffing Scheme's empanelment process for Deputy Secretary-level posts requires officers to clear a review by an empanelment committee that assesses vigilance clearance, annual performance appraisal ratings, and the availability of vacancies matching an officer's service background, a process that can take several review cycles before a suitable posting is confirmed. Officers from technical services such as the Indian Telecom Service increasingly compete for postings in economic ministries where their engineering or systems background is seen as transferable, a shift that has broadened the pool the Department of Personnel and Training draws on to fill Deputy Secretary vacancies across government.

The appointment is for a period of four years under the Central Staffing Scheme, as per the order.