Know Your Babu: Inland Waterways Authority of India’s new chairman Amitabh Verma

BIHAR cadre IAS of 1982 batch, Amitabh Verma will be the new chairman of Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), a post that lied vacant after its chief Vishwapati Trivedi was elevated as Union shipping secretary. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has cleared the name of Verma who had earlier worked as joint secretary in financial services department during UPA-I. Incidentally, Verma had worked under Vinod Rai who…
as financial services secretary was Verma’s immediate boss. Rai later became the country’s Comptroller and Auditor General and anchored a number of controversial audit reports including those on 2G spectrum and coal block allocations, the investigations of which are still on.
Verma, 54, is now a principal secretary to Bihar’s Panchayati Raj department. Earlier, he had served as collector of Muzaffarpur and commissioner of Purnia, both located in Bihar. In 1990s, he was on a Central deputation and served in the ministries of commerce and home affairs. He also sat in the board of a number of public sector banks and financial institutes.
A post graduate in political science, Verma has a working knowledge of German language.
As the head of Inland Waterways Authority of India, he would be instrumental in anchoring infrastructure development on national waterways through grants received from the ministry of shipping. The authority is headquartered at Noida, and has its regional offices at Patna, Kolkata, Guwahati and Kochi.