Ajit Kumar Doval (born 20 January 1945) is an Indian bureaucrat, spymaster and retired police and intelligence officer who has been serving as the longest tenured National Security Advisor of India (NSA) since 2014. Doval is serving his third consecutive five-year term as NSA. During his second tenure, he was given Cabinet rank. Doval previously held the position of Director of the Intelligence Bureau from 2004 to 2005, after leading its operations wing for over a decade. He worked as a career intelligence officer for over 33 years. He is recognized for his contributions to counter-terrorism and covert missions.
Born in Pauri Garhwal in present-day Uttarakhand, Doval completed his education from Ajmer Military School, Agra University, and the National Defence College. After clearing his Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination in 1968, he joined the Indian Police Service as a Kerala cadre officer. In 1972, he joined the Intelligence Bureau. His field assignments have spanned Mizoram, Sikkim, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir. He has held diplomatic assignments at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and London. He received the Kirti Chakra gallantry award in 1989, becoming the first police officer to receive the second-highest peacetime military honour. Doval was also involved in multiple negotiations of hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft. At headquarters he was founder chairman of the Multi Agency Centre and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence.
He retired as chief of the Intelligence Bureau in January 2005. In retirement he gave lectures, interviews and wrote op-eds. Around 2008, he helped set up the Rashtriya Raksha University. In 2009, he became founder director of the Vivekananda International Foundation, a public policy think tank based in New Delhi, and served as its director until his appointment as NSA. Major military operations during Doval's tenure include Operation Hot Pursuit, the Balakot airstrike and Operation Sindoor. The Doklam standoff was eventually resolved through diplomatic channels and negotiations.
Early life, education and personal life Doval was born in 1945 in Ghiri Banelsyun village in Pauri Garhwal in United Provinces (now in Uttarakhand) in the erstwhile British Raj (currently India). He is the son of GN Doval and Indra Doval. Doval's father, Major Gunanand Doval, was an officer in the Indian Army. He served in the Bengal Sappers for 36 years.
Doval received his early education at the Ajmer Military School in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree in economics from Agra University in 1967. During his master's he secured first position. The following year Doval cleared the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination. He went on to graduate from the 30th course of the National Defence College, New Delhi, in 1990.National Defence College Coffee Table Book. p. 36
He married Aruni Doval in 1972 and has two children Shaurya and Vivek Doval.
During a lecture in 2015, Doval said that he comes from a vegetarian family however his work led him to eat non-vegetarian food as well. During a dialogue in January 2026, Doval was asked a question about how he uses communication tools, he elaborated that he largely does not use the internet for work, and the phone only for family and when speaking to people abroad. He stated that there were also other methods of communication not used by the general public.
He does not have a social media account. He is fluent in Urdu.
Police and intelligence career (1968–2005) Doval joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1968 in the Kerala cadre as the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) of Kottayam district in Kerala. In 1972, he was transferred to riot hit Thalassery, Kerala. He was there for a few months between January and June 1972. In the same year he went on to join the central service, the Intelligence Bureau (IB). His government job in the IB largely saw him as a "typical undercover agent".
One of Doval's first assignments in the IB was to tackle the insurgency in northeast India, specifically in Mizoram. Between 1972 and 1977, he officially led the IBs Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau in Aizawl. Doval spent these five years mostly undercover. During this period, he was awarded the Police Medal for meritorious service in 1974. Doval had a role in laying the groundwork for negotiation, the 1976 agreement, and eventually the Mizoram Peace Accord of 1986. He was the man behind turning six of seven of Laldenga's commanders.
He had a role in Sikkim's merger with India in 1975 encompassing political engineering, liaisoning and facilitation. He was head of the IBs Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau in Sikkim.
Doval was in Pakistan for seven years. He worked at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad from 1983 to 1987. Officially, he was head of the commercial section. His undercover roles in Pakistan would allow him to visit mosques for prayers and make friends through which he could gather relevant information. To fit the role, he had to get plastic surgery done on his pierced ears. Working undercover in Pakistan as a beggar, he collected hair from scientists from a barber shop; this hair tested positive for signs of uranium, helping to expose Pakistan's nuclear programme. He also kept a watch over Sikh pilgrims and the separatist propaganda they faced.
In 1988, during Operation Black Thunder he infiltrated the Golden Temple posing as a Pakistani agent disguised as a rickshaw puller, spied on Khalistani separatists, and gathered information. He would go on to receive the Kirti Chakra for his role in the operation. At the time, Doval was a joint director in the IB. Insurgency in Punjab would keep him occupied for nearly a decade. In 1991, he headed the operation as a joint director to rescue a captured Romanian diplomat from four Sikh militant groups including Bhindranwale Tiger Force.
In the 1990s, he turned militant Kuka Parray. He also helped bring other Kashmiri separatists to the negotiating table.
Between 1992 and 1996, he was posted at India House, London.
He has the experience of being involved in the termination of all 15 hijackings of Indian Airlines aircraft from 1971 to 1999, a notable instance was the 1999 hijacked aeroplane IC-814. Doval would go on to say the negotiation was a diplomatic failure. This was the first time Doval would come under the gaze of the media.
He was trained under M. K. Narayanan, the third National Security Advisor of India for a brief period in counterterrorism operations.
In the headquarters, he headed IB's operations wing for over a decade and was founder Chairman of the Multi Agency Centre (MAC), as well as of the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI). He was appointed Director of IB in July 2004 and held the post until his retirement in January 2005. Doval's career as an intelligence officer spanned over 33 years. In 2004, Doval was made president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police for Asia and Pacific region.
Post-retirement (2005–2014) Doval retired in January 2005 as Director, Intelligence Bureau. He continued working unofficially.
In July 2005, Doval was briefly detained by Mumbai Police alongside Vicky Malhotra and Farid Tanasha, two members of Chhota Rajan's gang. Doval had been working on a secret plan to kill Dawood Ibrahim in Dubai where he was attending his daughter's wedding. Mumbai Police were unaware of Doval's involvement of the plot as they had gone in to arrest the two gangsters.
Doval remained actively involved in the discourse on national security in India. Besides writing editorial pieces for several leading newspapers and journals, he delivered lectures on India's security challenges and foreign policy objectives at several renowned government and non-governmental institutions, security think-tanks in India and abroad.
Around 2008, Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, brought in Doval to set up a university, the Rashtriya Raksha University.
In January 2009, he was chosen by the Government of Karnataka as its security advisor.
In December 2009, he became the founding Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a public policy think tank set up by the Vivekananda Kendra.
In 2009 and 2012, he co-wrote two reports on "Indian Black Money Abroad in Secret Banks and Tax Havens" as a part of a task force constituted by Bharatiya Janata Party.
In 2012, IB kept eyes on him due to then ruling party Congress's suspicions that Doval and VIF were the brains behind Ramdev and Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement, which generated anger against the government.
As director VIF, he has delivered guest lectures at National Defence College, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, Bureau of Police Research and Development, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, IIT Delhi, Jamia Milia Islamia University, Osmania University, Maharaja Agrasen College, Kanpur University, and Shri Ram College of Commerce among others. Lectures at foreign locations include International Institute for Strategic Studies, International Security Forum, American Foreign Policy Council, Capitol Hill, Keizai Koho Centre, and Project Interchange. Doval has written on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China, however comparatively very little on other countries.
On being named the NSA, he stepped down from his post as director of VIF in 2014.
National Security Advisor (2014–present)
First term On 30 May 2014, Doval was appointed as India's fifth National Security Advisor (NSA). Doval will hold the post as long as Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister, or until further orders.
He was appointed as the Prime Minister's special envoy to Afghanistan.
In June 2014, Doval facilitated the return of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq, following the capture of Mosul by ISIL. Doval, flew to Iraq on 25 June 2014 to understand the position on the ground and make high-level contacts in the Iraqi government. Although the exact circumstances of their release are unclear, on 5 July 2014, ISIL militants handed the nurses to Kurdish authorities at Erbil city and an Air India plane specially-arranged by the Indian government brought them back home to Kochi.
Along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, Doval planned a cross-border military operation against National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) separatists operating out of Myanmar. Indian officials claimed that the mission was a success and 20–38 separatists belonging to Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) were killed in the operation. However, the Myanmar government denied the strikes. According to Myanmar officials, the Indian operation against NSCN-K took place entirely on the Indian side of the border. He is widely credited for the doctrinal shift in Indian national security policy in relation to Pakistan. It was speculated that the September 2016 Indian strikes in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir were his brainchild. Doval is widely credited along with then Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Indian Ambassador to China Vijay Keshav Gokhale, for resolving the Doklam standoff through diplomatic channels and negotiations. As NSA, Doval is also the special representative responsible for the Special Representative mechanism on the India–China boundary question.
In October 2018, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Strategic Policy Group, which is the first tier of a three-tier structure at the National Security Council and forms the nucleus of its decision-making apparatus. As NSA, Doval is ex officio agency executive of the National Security Council, chairperson of the Defence Planning Committee, and executive council head of the Nuclear Command Authority.