Majha-origin IFS officer back in US for record 3rd time
Saturday, 10/08/2013
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130810/punjab.htm#17
Chandigarh : Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer Taranjit Singh Sandhu has joined a select band of career diplomats with the distinction of getting posted in Washington for the third time. Belonging to the 1988 batch of the IFS, Taranjit Sandhu from Amritsar will be the new Deputy to India’s Ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao.
The only other Indian diplomat to have been posted in Washington on three different occasions was TV Sreenivasan.
Taranjit Singh Sandhu hails from the illustrious Samundari family of the Majha belt. His grandfather, Teja Singh Samundari, has a hall named after him in the Golden Temple complex while his father, Bishan Singh Samundari, was the first Vice Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. One of his brothers is serving the Punjab Government as an IFS officer while the other one worked as a hockey coach in the Panchayati Raj Khed Parishad.
Initially, considered as an expert on the erstwhile Soviet Union, Taranjit Sandhu had a posting in Moscow where he learnt Russian. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Taranjit returned to one of its old member states in Kiev.
After completing the assignment of spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs, Taranjit got his first posting in Washington in 1997 as a First Secretary. Thereafter, Taranjit moved to the United States for his second assignment there as a Political Assistant to India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Nirupam Sen.
