NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen a daring former spy as his national security adviser.

The choice of Ajit Doval, alongside former Indian army chief General V.K. Singh as a federal minister for the northeast region, underscores plans to revamp national security that Modi says became weak under the outgoing government.

The two top-level appointments, reporting directly to Modi, point to a desire to address security concerns with regard to Pakistan and China, both of which have nuclear arms like India.

Doval, a highly decorated officer renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency missions, has long advocated tough action against militant groups, although operations he has been involved in suggest a level of pragmatism.

In the 1980s, he smuggled himself into the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar from where Sikh militants were later flushed out, and he infiltrated a powerful guerrilla group fighting for independence from India in the northeastern state of Mizoram. The group ultimately signed a peace accord.

Doval was also on the ground in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu was hijacked by militants on Christmas Eve, 1999. The crisis was resolved when top militants were freed in exchange for hostages.

“Doval is an out-of-the-box thinker,” said an Intelligence Bureau officer with long years of service in India-held Kashmir and other Indian hotspots. “Expect him to shake things up.”

The official said he expected the new security team to push for a rapid expansion of border infrastructure and a streamlining of intelligence services, which still function in isolation and often impede one other.

Gen Singh has declared his priority is to develop the northeast in order to narrow the gap with Chinese investment in roads and railways on its side of the frontier.

India is also creating a new mountain corps and beefing up border defences, although that initiative has stalled.

Doval, 69, formerly head of the Intelligence Bureau domestic spy agency, will be only the second officer from the intelligence community to hold the post of national security adviser.

By contrast, his predecessor Shiv Shankar Menon is a member of the elite Indian Foreign Service, an expert on China and nuclear security and is known for his formidable intellect.—Reuters

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2014