Date : 11 Mar, 2020     Time : 1530-1700 hrs

On 11 March 2020, IPCS hosted Rana Banerji (Member, IPCS Governing Council, and former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, India), Ambassador (Retd) Amar Sinha (Member, National Security Advisory Board, India; Distinguished Fellow, RIS; and former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan and Tajikistan), and Fawad Poya (PhD scholar, Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, and former legal consultant, Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution, Afghanistan), for a discussion on 'Afghanistan and the US-Taliban Agreement: Legal, Political, Security and Operational Implications'. The interaction was moderated by Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy (Deputy Director, IPCS), and took place from 1530-1700 hrs in the IPCS Conference Room.

Speakers

Rana Banerji 
Rana Banerji is Member, Governing Council, IPCS, and former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India. During his nearly four-decade long career in the Indian civil service, he served in a range of capacities both in India and abroad, wherein he dealt with security and intelligence-related issues impinging on national security policy formulation, with focused expertise on the South Asian region. He has also served as Visiting Professor, Pakistan Studies Programme, Department of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. He is a member of the Indian Council of World Affairs’ Core Group on Pakistan, and has headed the Task Force on Intelligence Reforms at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, in the past.

Ambassador (Retd) Amar Sinha 
Ambassador (Retd) Amar Sinha is Member, National Security Advisory Board, India; Distinguished Fellow, Research and Information System for Developing Countries; and former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In his diplomatic career spanning over 35 years, he has served in various capacities abroad, including, among others, in Algiers, Buenos Aires, Washington DC, Jakarta, and Brussels, and as Director, BSM (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar & the Maldives) division at India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi. His experience also includes overseeing India's participation in various multilateral fora, such as UNCTAD, APTA, BIMSTEC, G20, IBSA, BRICS etc. He retired as Secretary (Economic Relations) in 2016.

Fawad Poya
Fawad Poya is a PhD scholar in the Faculty of Legal Studies at South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi. Previously, he was a Legal Consultant to Afghanistan’s Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of Constitution (ICOIC), Kabul. Prior to this, he also served as the Chief of Staff at the ICOIC. He holds an LLM from SAU and a Bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Kabul University. He has presented several research papers in national and international conferences and workshops, and his research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and germane publications.