Shri. Ankan Banerjee
Shri Ankan Banerjee has been appointed as the High Commissioner of India to the Government of the Republic of Mozambique on February 17, 2021. He is a career diplomat who had joined the Indian Foreign Service in 2001. He was holding the charge of the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of India in Paris since September 2018.
Shri Ankan Banerjee’s first overseas assignment was at the Embassy of India in Madrid during 2003-05 where he served as Third Secretary and subsequently as Second Secretary. Thereafter, from 2005 to 2008, he served as Second Secretary and First Secretary at the Embassy of India in Bogota.
From 2008 to 2010, Shri Ankan Banerjee worked as Under Secretary and thereafter as Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi when he was the Desk Officer for our bilateral relations with Bhutan.
During 2010 to 2013, Shri Banerjee was assigned the charge of Director of the Indian Cultural Centre of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations -- the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre that worked under the aegis of the High Commission of India in Dhaka. His tenure in Dhaka coincided with the high point of our bilateral relations with Bangladesh when several significant milestones both in the political and cultural fields were achieved, including the joint celebrations of the 150th Birth Anniversary of Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore between India and Bangladesh through a year-long series of commemorative events.
From 2013 to 2017, Shri Banerjee was subsequently deployed as Counsellor at the Embassy of India in Brussels where he was assigned responsibilities of Political, Cultural, Press, Information, and Education related aspects of India’s engagement with the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg. During this period, the grand biennial India-Europalia Festival was celebrated across different parts of Belgium from October 2013 to January 2014 when celebrated reputed cultural artists and literary personalities from India participated to make the Festival both popular and attractive. His tenure at the Mission was also significant considering that the India-EU Summit was held in March 2016 after a gap of over 4 years. Several proactive measures were also taken to reinvigorate India’s bilateral relations with the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg during this period.
Returning to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi from 2017 to 2018, Shri Banerjee had served as Director in the Bangladesh and Myanmar Division where he dealt with all aspects of our bilateral relations with our aforesaid neighbours to consolidate and further build upon India’s “Neighbourhood First” and “Act East” Policies. Shri Banerjee’s tenure witnessed several high level visits, both incoming and outgoing, from and to Bangladesh and Myanmar, including that of the Hon’ble Prime Minister to Myanmar and that of the External Affairs Minister of India to both Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Born in 1972, Shri Ankan Banerjee was educated at the Junior Hindi High School in Kolkata and thereafter at the Scindia School in Gwalior from where he had graduated to join the BA (Hons) in Economics programme at the St. Stephen’s College under the University of Delhi. Thereafter, he successfully pursued Master of Arts and M. Phil degrees in Economics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Shri Banerjee speaks Hindi, English, Bengali and Spanish. Shri Banerjee is married to Ms. Sudipta Banerjee. He had been a keen painter, elocutionist, debater and dramatist during the formative years of his life.
