Rakesh Kumar Prajapati to Join as Director, DPIIT

Rakesh Kumar Prajapati, a 2012-batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, has been appointed Director in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade under the Central Staffing Scheme for a period of five years.

DPIIT sits within the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and is the department responsible for industrial policy, foreign direct investment norms, start-up promotion and the government's ease-of-doing-business rankings. A Director there works on files that shape how investment proposals and industrial licensing are processed across states.

Prajapati's move to DPIIT follows the usual path for a mid-career IAS officer from a hill-state cadre, where postings tend to combine district administration with departmental assignments in areas such as revenue, forests or rural development, before an officer is considered for a central deputation of this kind.

His posting in Himachal Pradesh prior to this central assignment would have involved the district or secretariat-level responsibilities typical of an officer at this stage of the 2012 batch, ahead of being deputed to Delhi.

The five-year term is standard for Director-level postings filled through the Central Staffing Scheme, under which state cadre officers are rotated through central ministries to build administrative depth at the Centre.

At DPIIT, Prajapati joins a department that has been active on start-up policy, the production-linked incentive schemes and the states' investment-friendliness rankings, an area where inter-state competition for investment has sharpened in recent years.

The appointment takes effect from the date Prajapati assumes charge of the post in New Delhi.