History was penned in Maharashtra this Sunday as senior IAS officer, Sujata Saunik took office as the first female Chief secretary of the state. She is the second woman in Maharashtra this year to assume a prominent leadership role, following Rashmi Shukla’s appointment as the Director General of Police, who is also the first woman to hold that position in history. Ms. Saunik, a member of the 1987 IAS batch, was appointed Chief Secretary by the MahaYuti government following the retirement of incumbent Chief Secretary Nitin Kareer. She will be serving a one-year tenure before retiring in June next year. Her husband, Manoj Saunik is also a former State Chief Secretary and shares the same IAS batch. Here is all about first female Chief Secretary of Maharashtra:
Who is Sujata Saunik?
Sujata Saunik was born in Haryana on June 15, 1965. Saunik is a 1987 batch IAS officer. Her husband, retired IAS Manoj Saunik, is from Bihar. He has also been the Chief Secretary of Maharashtra. Both are IAS officers of the same batch.
IAS Sujata Saunik did her schooling and college in Chandigarh. She graduated from Punjab University with a master's degree in history. She topped her post-graduation with a gold medal. Additionally, she has had a TechMi Fellowship at the School of Public Health at Harvard University.
Apart from this, IAS Sujata Saunik served on deputation to the United Nations (UN) Mission in 1992–1993 to help with voter registration and the first democratic elections in Cambodia, a country in Southeast Asia.
IAS Sujata Saunik also has extensive experience working with the UN in many nations. From 2000 until 2005, she served as Prizren's municipal administrator while on assignment to the UN Mission, which is Kosovo's second-largest city. She carried on a great deal of projects for the development of community buildings, marketplaces, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems in the Kosovo municipalities of Prizren and Obolic during this time.
Comes from a family of Bureaucrats
Saunik comes from a bureaucratic family. Her father, C D Cheema, was in IAS, served as the Punjab Election Commissioner after his retirement. Gautam Cheema, her brother, is an additional DG in the Punjab police. Two of her aunts, Asha Atri in Punjab and Rani Jadhav, who retired as the Mumbai Port Authority's chairperson, were also IAS members. In Maharashtra, her uncle A K D Jadhav served as an additional chief secretary (home). Her other uncle, Pradeep Singh, was employed by the Indian Foreign Service, while her maternal grandpa, Kartar Singh, served as the union government's secretary.