Ex-DoT Secy Deepak joins Bharti as Group Director for Policy, International Strategy

JS Deepak, former secretary at the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has joined Bharti as Group Director for Policy and International Strategy. He will report to Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.

Deepak was the DoT secretary from February 2016 to March 2017, after which he was shifted to the commerce ministry and assumed the position of Ambassador of India to the WTO in July 2017.

“JS Deepak has joined us as Group Director – International Strategy & Public Policy, reporting to the Chairman. The team of corporate affairs and public policy at the corporate office will report to him,” according to information circulated internally and seen by ET.

Bharti is the parent company of Bharti Airtel, India’s second largest telecom company.

Airtel didn’t offer an immediate comment.

Deepak superannuated in 2018 but his tenure at the WTO came to a close in May, 2020. Since March 2021, he was serving as a senior advisor to STL and as a Distinguished Fellow in the Oxford Research Foundation, both in part time capacities, as per his Linked In profile.

Deepak’s tenure as DoT secretary ended abruptly in February 2017, when he was attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While on the work assignment abroad, orders were issued on his transfer to the Commerce Ministry.

Just six-seven days before his transfer, Deepak had rapped Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for allowing Reliance Jio to provide its promotional offer beyond the 90-day period, causing a loss to the exchequer and hurting the financial health of the telecom sector.

Trai had back then said it had followed all extant rules.

Jio had launched commercial 4G services in September 2016.