West Bengal gets its first female Chief Secretary as Nandini Chakravorty

Senior IAS officer Nandini Chakravorty was appointed as chief secretary of West Bengal on Wednesday, December 31, 2025, becoming the first woman to hold the post in the state.

Ms. Chakravorty, who is in-charge of the Home and Hill Affairs Department in the Ministry of External Affairs, replaces Manoj Pant as Principal Secretary, who retired on December 31. Mr. Pant’s term was due to end on June 30, but he was given an extension of six months until December 31.

Ms. Chakravorty was replaced by Jagdish Prasad Meena, who will be the new Home Minister. The bureaucratic reshuffle assumes importance as West Bengal goes to assembly elections in 2026.

Another instruction of the West Bengal government was that Mr. Pant would be appointed as Principal Secretary to the Chief Secretary in the rank of Chief Secretary.

The Mamata Banerjee government has appointed a retired Chief Secretary with different administrative posts. In 2024, outgoing Chief Secretary HK Dwivedi was appointed as Chief Financial Adviser to the Prime Minister. Mr. Dwivedi’s predecessor, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, was retained by the Prime Minister’s principal advisor after his retirement as Chief Secretary.