Sujata Saunik is the 45th Chief Secretary of Maharashtra since 1960, when the state was carved out - and the first woman to occupy the top bureaucratic post.
Senior IAS officer Sujata Saunik took over as Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary, becoming the first woman in the state’s 64-year-old history to occupy the top post. Saunik, an IAS officer of the 1987 batch, succeeds Nitin Kareer who retired as the chief secretary on Sunday. She will have a year’s tenure before retiring in June next year.
Before her elevation as the chief secretary, Saunik, was the additional chief secretary in the state home department.Sujata Saunik has three decades of public policy and governance experience in healthcare, finance, education, disaster management, and peacekeeping at the district, state, and federal levels and in international organisations as part of the Indian Administrative Service and the United Nations.