Nilam Sawhney

Sawhney assumed office as the first woman Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh in November, 2019. She has since been known for her proactive style of governance and rapid implementation of policies aimed at social development of the state. She has aided the creation of major initiatives such as large scale revamping of the public health systems, creation of institutional transparency for pension schemes through e-governance and e-disbursement initiatives and creation of Rythu Bharosa Centres for agricultural amenities. As the Chief Secretary of the state during the COVID-19 crisis, she has thus far managed to maintain one of the highest per capita testing in the country in the state and large scale surveillance of symptoms in the population through five rounds of state wide door to door surveys and significant decentralisation and expansion of testing facilities to keep the pandemic in check.

Sawhney worked as secretary of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment from May 2018 to November 2019. While in office, she headed the group of secretaries for welfare setup by the honorable prime minister of India to drive policy framework creation towards focused goals on social welfare. She drafted policy aimed at ensuring basic human rights such as right to work with dignity and right to life for those economically and socially vulnerable classes who were pushed into or chose manual scavenging as a job, despite known dangers. Several programmes, policies and welfare measures, including the legislative and programmatic interventions, were introduced and implemented aimed at ending manual scavenging and providing alternate means of work during her tenure. During her stint as Secretary she also worked on policies aimed at eradicating AIDS, drug abuse and human trafficking in India proactively over the next decade through massive education, de-stigmatisation, drug rehabilitation and societal integration programs. During her term, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment was also responsible for a paradigm shift in laws relating to reservation and preservation of equality in the country, with a shift in focus to economically weaker sections, pushing through a constitutional amendment to guarantee the reservation of 10% of public sector quotas for economically weaker sections of society.

Sawhney worked as Secretary of Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) from May 2015 to May 2018. As Secretary of CVC, she played a major role in streamlining the proceedings of graft and corruption charges, bringing down average times for pending cases to be completed by more than 2 years. Of note, was her work in strengthening current strategies while also re-balancing them at the same time from largely punitive deterrence focused systems to ones that focused more on preventive vigilance, through dedicated institutional mechanisms to identify and punish the corrupt necessarily complemented by the need to deter wrongdoing and for the inculcation of ethical values in order to ensure that individuals as well as organisations act with integrity. During her term, there was notable increase in the Commission’s emphasis on the importance of preventive vigilance in government organisations as well as the public outreach and awareness initiatives of the Commission.

Sawhney joined the Department of Women & Child Development & Social Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh in February 2012 and served in this top post at the department till May 2015.

Sawhney served as the Vice Chairman And Managing Director of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Cooperation, Government of Andhra Pradesh from June 2011- February 2012.

Sawhney served as the Joint Secretary at Union Ministry of Rural Development for five years from August 2005 to August 2010. During this term she also had the opportunity to be a member of the committee in the working groups for the eleventh five year plan (2007-2012) for Social Protection Policy and the National Social Assistance Programme and Associated Programme, setup by the planning commission of India. Of particular note was her role in guiding the world`s largest public housing project (by number of houses built from 1985 to 2020) under the Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) (later run as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana), with more than 9 million houses (pukka) permanent settlements - modern houses built under IAY scheme from 2005-2010 alone during her tenure and more than 30 million built till 2020 (under IAY from 1985 to 2015 and PMAY from 2015-2020).

Nilam Sawhney (born 2 June 1960) is currently serving as chief election commissioner of Andhra Pradesh. She served as the first woman Chief Secretary of the newly formed state of Andhra Pradesh, India, from November 2019 to January 2021. She is a 1984 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre. She previously held the position of Secretary of Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment from 2018 to 2019 and before this served as the Secretary of Central Vigilance Commission in the Government of India from 2015 to 2018.