Deepak Mittal appointed India’s new Ambassador to the UAE
The Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday named Deepak Mittal as India’s next Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Mittal, an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 1998 batch, is currently Additional Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office and is expected to take up the posting shortly.
A seasoned diplomat, Mittal has earlier served as India’s Ambassador to Qatar. In that role, he held the first discussions with the Taliban political leadership after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. On August 31, 2021, he met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, head of the Taliban’s Political Office in Doha, to discuss the safety and early return of Indian nationals stranded in Afghanistan.
Before his Qatar assignment, Mittal handled the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran (PAI) desk at the External Affairs Ministry as Joint Secretary. He will succeed Sunjay Sudhir (IFS 1993) as Ambassador to the UAE.
India-UAE ties have strengthened since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Emirates in 2015 — the first by an Indian premier in 34 years. Both countries are working to deepen economic engagement under the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Officials last week reviewed progress on a shared target of $100 billion in non-oil bilateral trade by 2030 and discussed cooperation in renewables, digital infrastructure, supply-chain resilience and healthcare.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi held talks to push the CEPA agenda forward, reaffirming the aim of deeper partnership amid shifting global trade dynamics.
