Ajit Doval


Ajit Kumar Doval is an Indian bureaucrat, spymaster and retired police and intelligence officer who has been serving as the longest tenured National Security Advisor of India since 2014. Doval is serving his third consecutive five-year term as NSA. During his second tenure he was given Cabinet rank. Doval previously held the position of Director of the Intelligence Bureau from 2004 to 2005, after leading its operations wing for over a decade. He worked as a career intelligence officer for over 33 years. He is recognized for his contributions to counter-terrorism and covert missions.
Born in Pauri Garhwal in present-day Uttarakhand, Doval completed his education from Ajmer Military School, Agra University, and the National Defence College. After clearing his Union Public Service Commission examination in 1968 he joined the Indian Police Service as a Kerala cadre officer. In 1972 he joined the Intelligence Bureau. His field assignments have spanned Mizoram, Sikkim, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir. He has held diplomatic assignments at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and London. He received the Kirti Chakra gallantry award in 1989, becoming the first police officer to receive the second-highest peacetime military honour. Doval was also involved in multiple negotiations of hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft. At headquaters he was founder chairman of the Multi Agency Centre and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence.
He retired as chief of the Intelligence Bureau in January 2005. In retirement he gave lectures, interviews and wrote op-eds. Around 2008, he helped set up the Rashtriya Raksha University. In 2009, he bacame founder director of the Vivekananda International Foundation, a public policy think tank based in New Delhi, and served as its director until his appointment as NSA. Major military operations during Doval's tenure include Operation Hot Pursuit, the Balakot airstrike and Operation Sindoor. The Doklam standoff was eventually resolved through diplomatic channels and negotiations.

Early life, education and personal life

Doval was born in 1945 in Ghiri Banelsyun village in Pauri Garhwal in the erstwhile United Provinces, now in Uttarakhand. Born into a Brahmin family, he is the son of GN Doval and Indra Doval. Doval's father, Major Gunanand Doval, was an officer in the Indian Army. He served in the Bengal Sappers for 36 years.
Doval received his early education at the Ajmer Military School in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree in economics from Agra University in 1967. The following year Doval cleared the Union Public Service Commission examination. He went on to graduate from the 30th course of the National Defence College, New Delhi, in 1990.
He married Aruni Doval in 1972 and has two children Shaurya and Vivek Doval.
During a lecture in 2015, Doval said that he comes from a vegetarian family however his work led him to eat non-vegetarian food as well. During a dialouge in January 2026 Doval was asked a question about how he uses communication tools, he elaborated that he largely does not use the internet for work, and the phone only for family and when speaking to people abroad. He stated that there were also other methods of communication not used by the general public.
He does not have a social media account. He is fluent in urdu.

Police and intelligence career (1968–2005)

Doval joined the Indian Police Service in 1968 in the Kerala cadre as the Assistant Superintendent of Police of Kottayam district in Kerala. In 1972, he was transferred to riot hit Thalassery, Kerala. He was there for a few months between January and June 1972. In the same year he went on to join the central service, the Intelligence Bureau. His government job in the IB largely saw him as a "typical undercover agent".
One of Doval's first assignments in the IB was to tackle the insurgency in northeast India, specifically in Mizoram. Between 1972 and 1977 he officially led the IBs Subsidary Intelligence Bureau in Aizawl. Doval spent these five years mostly undercover. During this period he was awarded the Police Medal for meritorious service in 1974. Doval had a role in laying the groundwork for negotiation, the 1976 agreement, and eventually the Mizoram Peace Accord of 1986. He was the man behind turning six of seven of Laldenga's commanders.
He had a role in Sikkim's merger with India in 1975 encompassing political engineering, liaisoning and facilitation. He was head of the IBs Subsidary Intelligence Bureau in Sikkim.
Doval was in Pakistan for seven years. He worked at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad from 1983 to 1987. Officially he was head of the commercial section. His undercover roles in Pakistan would allow him to visit mosques for prayers and make friends through which he could gather relevant information. To fit the role, he had to get plastic surgery done on his pierced ears. Working undercover in Pakistan as a beggar, he collected hair from scientists from a barber shop; this hair tested positive for signs of uranium, helping to expose Pakistan's nuclear programme. He also kept a watch over Sikh pilgrims and the separatist propaganda they faced.
In 1988 during Operation Black Thunder, he infiltrated the Golden temple posing as a Pakistani agent disguised as a rickshaw puller and spied on Khalistani separatists, gathered information about their weapons and made maps of their positions. He would go on to receive the Kirti Chakra for his role in the operation. At the time Doval was a joint director in the IB. Insurgency in Punjab would keep him occupied for nearly a decade.
In 1991 he headed the operation to rescue a captured Romanian diplomat from four Sikh militant groups including Bhindranwale Tiger Force. In the 1990s he also turned militant Kuka Parray. He also helped bring other Kashmiri separatists to the negotiating table.
Between 1992 and 1996 he was posted at India House, London.
He has the experience of being involved in the termination of all 15 hijackings of Indian Airlines aircraft from 1971 to 1999, a notable instance was the 1999 hijacked aeroplane IC-814. Years later Doval would go on to say the negotiation was a diplomatic failure. This was the first time Doval would come under the gaze of the media.
He was trained under M. K. Narayanan, the third National Security Advisor of India for a brief period in counterterrorism operations.
In the headquarters, he headed IB's operations wing for over a decade and was founder Chairman of the Multi Agency Centre, as well as of the Joint Task Force on Intelligence.
Doval was later appointed director of the Intelligence Bureau. He culminated his IB career as Director from July 2004 until his retirement on 31 January 2005, succeeding another career intelligence officer amid the transition to the Manmohan Singh administration. In this apex position, ranked equivalent to a Secretary to the Government of India, his directorial stint though brief at under seven months, prioritized institutional strengthening over partisan alignments, as evidenced by sustained operational continuity post-retirement. In 2004 Doval was made president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police for Asia and Pacific region. Doval's career as an intelligence officer has spanned over 33 years.

Post-retirement (2005–2014)

Doval retired in January 2005 as Director, Intelligence Bureau. He continued working unofficially.
In July 2005, Doval was briefly detained by Mumbai Police alongside Vicky Malhotra and Farid Tanasha, two members of Chhota Rajan's gang. Doval had been working on a secret plan to kill Dawood Ibrahim in Dubai where he was attending his daughter's wedding. Mumbai Police were unaware of Doval's involvement of the plot as they had gone in to arrest the two gangsters.
Doval remained actively involved in the discourse on national security in India. Besides writing editorial pieces for several leading newspapers and journals, he delivered lectures on India's security challenges and foreign policy objectives at several renowned government and non-governmental institutions, security think-tanks in India and abroad.
Around 2008, Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, brought in Doval to set up a university, the Rashtriya Raksha University.
In January 2009, he was chosen by the Government of Karnataka as its security advisor.
In December 2009, he became the founding Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation, a public policy think tank set up by the Vivekananda Kendra.
In 2009 and 2012 he co-wrote two reports on "Indian Black Money Abroad in Secret Banks and Tax Havens", with others, leading in the field as a part of the task force constituted by Bharatiya Janata Party.
In 2012, IB kept eyes on him due to then ruling party Congress's suspicions that Doval and his think tank VIF were the brains behind Ramdev and Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement, which generated anger against the government.
In recent years, he has delivered guest lectures on strategic issues at IISS, London, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Australia-India Institute, University of Melbourne, National Defence College, New Delhi and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. Doval has also spoken internationally at global events, citing the ever-increasing need of co-operation between the major established and emerging powers of the world.
During the tenth Nani Palkhivala Memorial lecture in February 2014, when talking about how to tackle Pakistan, he stated three postures- defensive, defensive-offence, and offensive. Doval said that India had so far been defensive and that it was time to turn to a defensive-offensive stance. He rules out an offensive strategy as that could lead to the nuclear threshold being crossed. During the lecture he stated that if another attack like Mumbai 26/11 happened, Pakistan may be split. This three level engagement has come to be known as the 'Doval Doctrine'.
On being named the NSA, he stepped down from his post as director of VIF in 2014.

National Security Advisor (2014–present)

First term

On 30 May 2014, Doval was appointed as India's fifth National Security Advisor.
He was appointed as the Prime Minister's special envoy to Afghanistan.
In June 2014, Doval facilitated the return of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq, following the capture of Mosul by ISIL. Doval, flew to Iraq on 25 June 2014 to understand the position on the ground and make high-level contacts in the Iraqi government. Although the exact circumstances of their release are unclear, on 5 July 2014, ISIL militants handed the nurses to Kurdish authorities at Erbil city and an Air India plane specially-arranged by the Indian government brought them back home to Kochi.
Along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, Doval planned a cross-border military operation against National Socialist Council of Nagaland separatists operating out of Myanmar. Indian officials claimed that the mission was a success and 20–38 separatists belonging to Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland were killed in the operation. However, the Myanmar government denied the strikes. According to Myanmar officials, the Indian operation against NSCN-K took place entirely on the Indian side of the border.
He is widely credited for the doctrinal shift in Indian national security policy in relation to Pakistan. It was speculated that the September 2016 Indian strikes in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir were his brainchild. Doval is widely credited along with then Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Indian Ambassador to China Vijay Keshav Gokhale, for resolving the Doklam standoff through diplomatic channels and negotiations. As NSA, Doval is also the special representative responsible for the Special Representative mechanism on the India–China boundary question.
In October 2018, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Strategic Policy Group, which is the first tier of a three-tier structure at the National Security Council and forms the nucleus of its decision-making apparatus.
After a Pakistan based militant attacked a CRPF convoy with a car bomb in Pulwama which resulted in the deaths of 40 CRPF personnel, the Indian Air Force conducted an airstrike on terrorist bases in Pakistan Doval was one of the seven persons who knew about India's classified 2019 Balakot airstrike, including Indian Navy, Army, Airforce chiefs and prime minister Narendra Modi. Following the airstrike and retaliatory 2019 Jammu and Kashmir airstrikes and subsequent capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman by Pakistani military, Ajit Doval held talks with US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to secure the release of the Indian pilot.

Second term

On 3 June 2019, he was reappointed as NSA for another 5 years and granted the personal rank of a Cabinet Minister. Doval is the first NSA to hold such a rank. He was previously a Minister of State. Doval is widely considered to be one of Modi's most powerful and trusted advisors, with major influence over India's national security and foreign affairs. He would go onto become India's longest serving NSA.
He was also an instrumental figure in revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
On 26 February 2020, Ajit Doval walked the streets of riot-hit northeast Delhi to assess the situation and reassure the local residents.
On 15 May 2020, the military forces of Myanmar handed over a group of 22 militant leaders, active in Assam and other northeast states, to the Indian government. This was made possible through negotiations headed by Doval.
On 15 September 2020, Doval walked out of a virtual SCO meeting after Pakistan projected a fictitious map omitting parts of India.

Third term

On 13 June 2024, Ajit Doval was granted third five-year extension for his tenure as National Security Advisor of India. Doval will hold the post as long as Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister, or until further orders.
In the 2025 India–Pakistan conflict following the Pahalgam terror attack, NSA Ajit Doval played a key role in formulating India's strategic response. He coordinated Operation Sindoor, a series of precision airstrikes on terrorist camps located in Pakistan. Indian officials described the operation as "measured and non-escalatory," aimed at neutralizing terrorist threats without provoking a broader conflict.
In January 2026, Doval addressed the "Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue," where he called on the youth to "avenge our history" through proactive national reconstruction. This address was noted for its departure from traditional scholarly focus on historical loot, framing national building instead as a form of civilizational resurgence.

Awards and recognitions

In popular culture