Off the wire
• Nobel laureates warn Trump's economic policies could lead to deep recession  • Spotlight: Brazil faces security crisis after prison violence  • Indian lawmaker arrested for raping minor girl  • El Nino brings dry year to upper Yellow River  • Fire breaks out in Bangladesh's top medical university, no casualties  • Nepal expects China's "Nepal Tourism Promotion Year 2017" to revive tourism industry  • PBOC's yuan stabilization efforts key reason for China's forex reserve fall: SAFE  • Cambodia moves to peace, stability, development under ruling CPP's leadership: PM  • China's forex reserve continue to shrink in December  • Interview: U.S. carmaker to face consequences after canceling investment in Mexico -- academic  
You are here: 　 Home

U.S. Ambassador to India may be on his way out

Xinhua, January 7, 2017 Adjust font size:

U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma may be on his way out if media reports of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump asking all President Barack Obama's political appointee envoys to put in their papers before his inauguration on Jan. 20 are to be believed.

According to a report in U.S.-based The Washington Post newspaper, the Obama administration has asked all "non-career ambassadors to submit their resignations effective with the close of the Obama presidency" on Jan. 20.

The newspaper said, quoting two officials, that "the unusually stern and specific directive to political ambassadors" came at the "behest of the incoming Trump administration". Usually non-career diplomats are given some additional time to wind up their affairs after a president's term ends.

Indian-origin Verma, a political appointee diplomat, will now have to relinquish his post by January 20 and he may either return to the United States or stay in India in the capacity of a private person till his children complete the academic year in school by the middle of 2017, sources said.

A qualified lawyer, Verma was appointed as the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs by the Obama administration in 2009. But he subsequently resigned and went to work for a law firm in 2011 before being nominated as the U.S. Ambassador to India in 2014. Enditem