The Centre  gave a one-year extension to Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla. He took over as the home secretary in August 2019. Now, he has been given an extension for one year up to August 22, 2023.

Before taking over as secretary, Bhalla was an officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Ministry of Home Affairs. He served as Secretary in the Ministry of Power from June 2017 to July 2019. Bhalla, who is MSc in Botany from Delhi University and MBA from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, has also served in various departments in the states and the central governments.

He was Director General of Foreign Trade from October 2016 with the additional charge of director, IIFT from 29 November 2016 till 30th June 2017.

Before joining DGFT, Bhalla worked as Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce from 13th April 2015. He also functioned as Designated Authority, Directorate General Anti Dumping since 4th August 2015.

Prior to this assignment, Bhalla worked as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Coal from 1st July 2010 and Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Coal from 8th January 2015 to 12th April 2015. In this assignment, he dealt with the allocation and allotment of coal blocks.

In previous assignments, Bhalla has worked as Director (Ports) in the Department of Shipping from May 2002 to March 2005. There he looked after the port operations and human resource development matters of all the major ports in the country. He has also handled various assignments in the cadre in Assam and Meghalaya.