SP Goyal, a Yogi confidant, takes charge as new UP Chief Secretary
Considered close to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Goyal was serving as the additional chief secretary to the CM, handling Protocol, Civil Aviation and the Estate departments.
He has been working in the Chief Minister's office (CMO) for the past eight years, ever since the BJP, led by Adityanath, formed government in the state in 2017.
He was also the additional resident commissioner of Uttar Pradesh.
Known for his low-key style of functioning and for planning and coordination skills as well as political acumen, Goyal is likely to continue to hold the post till the 2027 Assembly elections. Being seen as a calculated move, his appointment comes at a time when the state government is increasingly faced with infighting between ministers, MLAs and officials.
In 2017, he was on deputation to the Centre as joint secretary, Higher Education Department, in the Union Education Ministry. Soon after his repatriation to the state in May 2017, he was appointed principal secretary to the Chief Minister and continued to look after the Protocol, Civil Aviation and the Estate departments even after his promotion as additional chief secretary to CM in 2020.
Officials said during the Covid-19 pandemic, Goyal acted as a crucial link between the Chief Minister and other departments.
Interestingly, he was considered a front-runner to the Chief Secretary's post in 2024 when Durga Shankar Mishra's term ended but Manoj Kumar Singh, an IAS officer of the 1988 batch, was given charge instead.
In the past, he served as the district magistrate of Mathura, Etawah and Prayagraj and as secretary to the Planning, and Irrigation departments.
Goyal, who was also considered powerful during the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government from 2007 to 2012, will also hold the additional charge of Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner, additional chief secretary, Coordination Department, and UPIEDA chief executive officer (CEO).
However, the charge of principal secretary, Estate Department and Civil Aviation, has been given to Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Sanjay Prasad.
After assuming charge as the Chief Secretary on Thursday, Goyal told mediapersons that he would ensure that full emphasis is laid on the implementation of the 'policies of zero tolerance, zero corruption, industrial development and economic development' in the state.
'On the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, efforts will be made to take Uttar Pradesh on the path of development and make the state a 1-trillion dollar economy. He would ensure that development works are completed in a timely manner and concrete steps are taken to make UP an industrial hub, Goyal said.
He also thanked CM Adityanath for 'giving me the opportunity to serve on the top administrative post in the state'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
13 minutes ago
- The Hindu
What has been missed is India's digital sovereignty
The India-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement (FTA), called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), has been lauded by the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, as the 'gold standard' for all India's trade deals. Mr. Goyal has asserted that no compromise was made in any sensitive sector. Evidently, the Minister seemed to be counting only agriculture and labour-intensive manufacturing as sensitive sectors — which they are. But remarkably, despite the wide coverage the FTA has received, the impact on India's other, highly sensitive digital sector, which permeates every sphere of national activity and holds the key to our future, has gone without official comment or media scrutiny. We argue that the compromises made in the digital sector through the India-U.K. FTA have profound consequences for India's digital sovereignty — a term frequently invoked in high-level political discourse. India has completely flipped on several core positions that it has long maintained at global forums, including at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Source code disclosure The most surprising giveaway is on India's sovereign right to seek ex ante access to the source code for foreign digital goods or services, even for those deemed sensitive. This is very different from getting source code ex post for a specific investigation or remedy, which is allowed under the agreement. Regulators in different sectors often have strict disclosure rules, such as for food and medicine ingredients. Software now permeates nearly every product, including telecom, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and health applications, whereby it may be crucial for the regulators to be able to 'look under the hood' of software, for safety, security and general compliance requirements, and to enable urgent, real-time upgrades. Giving up this right is a 180-degree turn from India's steadfast stand at the WTO and other forums. Even the United States, which first included source code related prohibitions in its FTAs and at the WTO, withdrew this formulation last year, recognising its domestic regulatory, law enforcement and security imperatives. In the U.S. driven Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the 'source code disclosure' provision applied only to mass-market software such as Microsoft's operating systems — meaning not to niche and custom-made software. It specifically excluded software for critical infrastructure. In the U.K. FTA text, the prohibition applies to all software. Businesses are always free to enter, or avoid, transactions requiring disclosure of source code. What is sacrificed here are India's regulatory rights in this regard, for all times to come, in a sector that has just begun to take shape. Surrendering a critical national resource Granting equal and non-discriminatory access for U.K. parties to 'Open Government Data' — a term from the pre-digital era which then meant government transparency, and access to its statistics — constitutes another major giveaway. This is because data is not what it used to be. Today, it has acquired an entirely new avatar, being the digital era's most valuable resource. AI, where heated competition for global mastery is raging, is but patterns derived from data, which is why data is deemed to be priceless. This concession is very significant, even though this provision is yet at a 'best endeavour' level, and non-binding. It is incomprehensible why India (where the intention to be an AI superpower is a staple of top-level political rhetoric), has conceded that national data held by the government is not a sovereign resource but an international free for all. Facilitating foreign access to such data poses risks of eroding India's competitive advantage in using India's own data to create Indian AI products, and also serious security risks as national data can be weaponised. The most contested issues in digital trade are the 'free flow of data' and 'data localisation'. While India seems to have largely stood its ground on these issues, its commitment to 'enter into consultations to extend appropriate equivalent disciplines' to the U.K. if India agrees to any concessions with another country, denotes a dangerous regress, and visible vulnerability, with regard to India's long-held positions on these key issues. This matter links to the one above on India's data being an important national economic resource as well as the need to safeguard it from a security point of view. Again, last year, owing to similar considerations, the U.S., the original proponent of 'free flow of data' and 'prohibition on data localisation', withdrew from these stances at the WTO. It is difficult to understand how Indian negotiators could be so naive or negligent in agreeing to the above concessions. Digital trade concessions are not like those on commodities, where tariffs can be applied one day and removed on another. Digital trade texts are essentially about rule making for a new global digital order. We either fully opt into western, Big Tech-oriented, digital architectures, or we maintain sufficient autonomy and sovereignty. This is because once the digital rules and systems are set, they are almost impossible to roll back. India's digital concessions are thus buttressing a set of rules for a global digital ecosystem from which India cannot extricate itself later. And India is doing all this in a reactive mode without a clear road map of its own. It seems that the U.K. was able to extract all the above concessions, the absolute opposite to what India has stood for till now, because, unlike manufacturing and agriculture, there is no specific political 'constituency' for digital sovereignty. But it is perhaps an even more important issue in the mid to long term. We may be seeing a repeat of how India lost out on early industrialisation and had to suffer grievous colonial exploitation, causing a loss of wealth and independence. In making these digital concessions, we may be giving up our digital future, independence and prosperity. India must act quickly India needs to develop and negotiate towards a global digital architecture that protects and furthers its digital sovereignty. As a late starter in 'digital industrialisation', it should create the space required for India to become a digital superpower and not a digital colony. For this, India needs to urgently formulate a full-fledged digital sovereignty and 'digital industrialisation' policy which should then inform and guide its trade negotiations. Our negotiators must be accompanied by digital sovereignty experts with access to the top political leadership, which has the core responsibility for safeguarding India's long-term digital interests. These interests are often not so visible, and, therefore, tend to get by-passed and not fought for. Smita Purushottam is India's former Ambassador to Switzerland. Parminder Jeet Singh is a Delhi-based digital society researcher
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
an hour ago
- Business Standard
Donald Trump's 25% tariff hit triggers layoff warning from exporters
No Russia penalty yet; key meetings between Goyal and exporters on Saturday, Sunday Shine Jacob Shreya Nandi Chennai/New Delhi Listen to This Article US President Donald Trump on Friday formally imposed a sweeping 25 per cent import tariff on Indian goods, sparking fears of mass layoffs among exporters, especially in the textiles sector. Though the anticipated 'penalty' tied to India's purchases from Russia was absent, the tariff hike placed Indian exporters at a disadvantage compared with regional peers such as Bangladesh, which secured a lower 20 per cent rate from Washington. According to a White House executive order, the new tariffs are set to come into effect from August 7 and will be imposed over and above the existing World Trade Organization-compliant tariffs,
The Hindu
4 hours ago
- The Hindu
EU Chief's texts to pharma boss during pandemic were likely erased, say media reports
Text messages exchanged between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a pharmaceutical boss during the COVID-19 pandemic were seen by her top adviser and have likely been destroyed, the New York Times reported on Friday (August 1, 2025). Von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla exchanged the messages as COVID-19 ravaged European communities from Portugal to Finland and the EU scrambled to buy millions of hard to find vaccines. She was under intense scrutiny to deliver. The U.S. newspaper took the European Union's executive branch to court after it refused to share the messages under the bloc's transparency laws. In May, the court said the commission had failed to provide a credible explanation for declining access. In a letter to the Times dated July 28, the commission said von der Leyen's head of cabinet, Bjoern Seibert, had last month examined the phone she uses and its Signal app and 'did not find any messages corresponding to the description given' in the newspaper's request. It said Seibert also checked her phone in 2021 and found the messages only helped to ensure that calls between von der Leyen and Bourla could be arranged as needed, so they were not kept as official documents. The commission insists text messages and other 'ephemeral' electronic communications do not necessarily constitute documents of interest that should be saved or made public. Von der Leyen herself was responsible for deciding whether the texts constituted documents of value and worth keeping. The commission also noted in its letter that her phone has been replaced 'several times' since the messages were exchanged, the last time in mid-2024. Her cabinet said the old messages were not saved and the phones were 'formatted and recycled.' Critics accuse von der Leyen and Seibert of centralizing power in the EU's powerful executive branch, tightly controlling who works in the cabinets of the various policy commissioners and vetting communications. Von der Leyen survived a July 10 no-confidence vote in the European Parliament, the first against a commission president in over a decade, which was called in part over the text messaging scandal dubbed Pfizergate, the alledged misuse of EU funds and doubtful allegations about election interference.
