Amit Khare (born 1961) is an

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. Considered the premier civil service of India, the IAS is one of the three arms of the All India Services along with the India ...

officer (1985 batch) from

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

Jharkhand Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . ...

cadre and is currently serving as the advisor to prime minister Narendra Modi. He is noted for his role in bringing to light the Fodder scam, in which Rs. 940 crores were embezzled in

over many years, and successive chief ministers Jagannath Mishra and Lalu Yadav have been imprisoned.

Early life

He was born in a religious Chitraguptvanshi Kayastha family and did his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Hinoo in 1977 and then finished his Bachelor's with Honors from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He has an elder brother

Atul Khare Atul Khare (born in 1959) is a career international diplomat and civil servant who currently serves as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations in UN Department of Operational Support and previously as Under Secretary General in United Nati ...

, who is an

Indian Foreign Service The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the 34th and the ...

officer.

Career

In late 1995, Bihar was in a financial crunch. The then charismatic yet 'native' leader Lalu Prasad Yadav was the Chief Minister of undivided Bihar, where the then finance commissioner VS Dubey stumbled upon the financial irregularities of massive scale. In December 1995, Dubey was, as part of his job, reviewing the performance of various departments. He found that money was withdrawn in excess of the allocation by some of the department. Khare, who was then

District Magistrate A District Collector-cum-District Magistrate (also known as Deputy Commissioner in some states) is an All India Service officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre who is responsible for ''land revenue collection'', ''canal revenu ...

Chaibasa Chaibasa is a town and a municipality in West Singhbhum district in the state of Jharkhand, India. Chaibasa is the district headquarters of West Singhbhum district. It is also the headquarter of Singhbhum Kolhan division headed by the Divisiona ...

, noted that the district animal husbandry department had withdrawn Rs 10 crore and Rs 9 crore twice without giving any details. Even when questioned, there was no response from the animal husbandry department. Finally, in January 1996,Khare visited the office to investigate, and found it looking as if "someone had tried to destroy files in a hurry". Many bogus bills were for amounts just under Rs. 10 lakhs (when there are more stringent authorization norms). It seemed that such payments had been going on for years. The next day, simultaneous raids conducted at Ranchi and elsewhere found similar practices. This was the first evidence of the scam, which gathered momentum after regional CBI director

U. N. Biswas Upendranath Biswas or U. N. Biswas is an Indian politician, caste historian and a retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer. He served as the Minister of Backward Classes Welfare in the Government of West Bengal from 2011 to 2016 in the First ...

defied political pressures to pursue the case up to the chief minister level. Those convicted include the preceding DM of Chaibasa, IAS officer Sajal Chakraborty. Khare has interests in Education and has served the State Elementary education secretary for several terms, and has also worked at the

Ministry of Human Resource Development The Ministry of Education ( MoE; formerly the Ministry of Human Resource Development from 1985 to 2020) is a ministry of the Government of India, responsible for the implementation of the National Policy on Education. The Ministry is further ...

at the center. He also served as a vice-chancellor of the Ranchi University. He helped introduce the National Education Policy 2020 which was approved by the cabinet on 29 July 2020. He has also served as principal secretary to

governor Ved Marwah, and as Collector and DM,

Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

. He has served as Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. On 14 December 2019, he assumed charge as Secretary,

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

(Department of Higher Education) with additional charge of School Education - in background of ongoing negotiations with JNU students regarding fee hike and campus lockdown. Khare was appointed advisor to PM Narendra Modi on 12 October 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khare, Amit 1961 births Bihar cadre civil servants Indian Administrative Service officers Living people