Rajesh Aggarwal (IAS)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Rajesh Aggarwal

• Rajesh Aggarwal completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi during 1983–1987. His B.Tech thesis focused on Natural Language Understanding, and his main academic interests were Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.

• He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1989. Between 1991 and 1998, during his field postings, he developed several small IT projects to improve transparency and delivery of government services.

  

• From 2003 to 2007, he worked in the Election Commission of India, New Delhi.

• During this period, he developed fuzzy matching techniques to remove duplicate voter entries and handled large databases of around 700 million voters and 500 million photographs in more than a dozen Indian languages.

• He executed the Photo Rolls project, enabling voters’ photographs to appear on electoral rolls. He also convinced the Delimitation Commission to use GIS maps from the Census of India to draw new Assembly and Parliament boundaries.

• Between 2007 and 2009, he managed the Internet Exchange of India. During this tenure, domestic internet traffic within the country increased substantially, and .IN domain registrations grew rapidly.

• He also introduced several forward-looking internet policies. In 2009, while holding additional charge of the Social Justice Department, he initiated direct transfer of scholarship money into students’ bank accounts.

• As Secretary, Accounts and Treasuries, he introduced electronic systems to make all government receipts and payments cheque-less.

• From June 2011 to January 2015, he served as Principal Secretary (IT) for the Government of Maharashtra. He focused on strengthening IT fundamentals through his philosophy of “eGov 0.0,” emphasizing governance and technology basics instead of hype.

  

• As Maharashtra’s Chief Information Officer, he helped the state reach the top position in India’s e-Governance ecosystem. Maharashtra became number one in Aadhaar enrollment, Common Service Centres, and electronic payments and receipts.

• The state also advanced in eTendering, eOffice, cloud usage, and IPv6 adoption. Under his leadership, Maharashtra’s e-Governance initiatives won more than 300 national and international awards.

• As Adjudicating Officer under the IT Act, he wrote more than seventy judgments that received wide media coverage.

• In 2014, he was named among the Global 100 CIOs by Computerworld USA. In January 2015, he joined the Ministry of Finance as Joint Secretary (Financial Services) and Mission Director of the Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojana.

• Later, he served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, where his field visits to remote regions provided insights into how technology can empower or limit communities.

• He then served as Additional Secretary and Director General Training in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, also holding charge of DG (NIESBUD).

• From January 2020 to September 2021, he worked as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and also advised the Ministries of Corporate Affairs and Chemicals and Fertilizers.

• From September 2021 to September 2022, he served as Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

• Since September 2022, he has been serving as Secretary to the Government of India in the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.

  

• In November 2025, rumours flew that he would be the next chief secretary of Maharashtra.

• He continues to focus on accessibility initiatives, ensuring that government websites, public buildings, and polling stations are friendly for persons with disabilities.

• He has promoted Braille-enabled electronic voting machines and ramps for wheelchair access at polling booths. He also works on Indian language computing, having handled voter data in fifteen Indian languages and developed fuzzy matching algorithms for Indian scripts.

• He remains interested in natural language understanding, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics. He runs two hobby websites—www.ilovemaths.com and www.eGovernance.guru—to share knowledge on mathematics and e-governance practices.