India appoints Assamese diplomat to Taiwan

India has named senior diplomat Gourangalal Das from Assam as its new representative to Taiwan on Sunday, a daily reported.

Amid the escalating border tensions between India and China, this decision comes at a time in a bid to upgradation of India and Taiwan relations. Over the past few months, the US and China have brawled over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Das is currently the Joint Secretary (Americas) in the Ministry of External Affairs. A formal announcement is yet to be made. Das will be replacing career diplomat Sridharan Madhusudhanan.

Last week, Taiwan had also changed it representative to India. Baushuan Ger is the new Director-General of the India-Taipei Association. As of date, India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan due to the One-China policy.

Das belongs to the 1999 batch of the Indian Foreign Service. He was stationed in Beijing from 2001 and 2004, and was appointed as the First Secretary (Political) in 2006 and remained till 2009. He was also the Deputy Secretary handling External Affairs in the Prime Minister's Office during the tenure of Manmohan Singh.  Das did set up the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. During his term as Joint Secretary (Americas), Indo-US bilateral relations grew immensely.