Ahmedabad: Senior IAS officer Pankaj Joshi on Friday took over as the new Chief Secretary of Gujarat following the retirement of Raj Kumar from the top post.

Joshi, a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Gujarat-cadre, hails from Uttarakhand's Nainital and studied B Tech and M Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

Joshi, 59, is the senior most IAS officer in Gujarat at present. After holding various positions during his tenure, he was appointed in the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) as an ACS in 2021.

After assuming the office of the Chief Secretary, Joshi said, "Gujarat has been a leader in many industrial sectors, including the ease of doing business and attracting foreign direct investment. Gujarat has grown exponentially in the last two-and-a-half decades and our first priority will be to make it grow faster in the coming years."

The state government, under Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, will continue to work towards realising the vision of "self-reliant India through self-reliant Gujarat", he said.

The Gujarat government has prepared a vision document named 'Viksit Gujarat 2047'. The roadmap to 2047 has been prepared on two key themes - Earning Well and Living Well, an official release quoted him as saying.

On his retirement, Raj Kumar was greeted by senior bureaucrats as well as the heads of various departments, the release said.

On the last day of his service, Raj Kumar paid a courtesy visit to Governor Acharya Devvrat at the Raj Bhavan. The governor praised him for his tenure as the chief secretary, and wished him a healthy life ahead, it said.

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)