Indian Foreign Minister

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The External Affairs Minister or the Indian Foreign Minister is a position of office at cabinet level within the Government of India. The chief responsibility of the External Affairs Minister is to represent India and its government in the international community. The minister heads the "Ministry of External Affairs." Occasionally, a junior minister designated to the post of Minister of State for External Affairs assists the External Affairs Minister. In some cases, there have been Deputy External Affairs Ministers at a secondary level.

The External Affairs ministry is run by bureaucratic officials from the Indian Foreign Service. The head of this department is the Foreign Secretary. This department is also responsible for international Diplomatic postings. The position of external affairs minister hold significance in the sense that, when this position have been vacant, the Prime Ministers have been the only person to have held additional charge as External Affairs Minister. There have been a number of External Affairs Ministers who later went on to become the Prime Ministers of India.

As of Oct 2006, this position is currently held by Pranab Mukherjee of Indian National Congress Party.

1 Foreign Ministers of India
2 Deputy Foreign Ministers of India
3 Minister of State, External Affairs
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Foreign Ministers of India

No	Name	Took Office	Left Office	Other Positions	Lok Sabha (Term in Office) ^ ^[1]
1.	Jawaharlal Nehru	02 Sep 1946	27 May 1964	Prime Minister	1st 2nd 3rd (4th)
2.	Gulzari Lal Nanda	27 May 1964	09 Jun 1964	Prime Minister	3rd (1st)
3.	Lal Bahadur Shastri	09 Jun 1964	17 Jul 1964	Prime Minister	3rd (1st)
4.	Sardar Swaran Singh	18 Jul 1964	14 Nov 1966		3rd (1st)
5.	M C Chagla	14 Nov 1966	05 Sep 1967		3rd 4th (1st)
6.	Indira Gandhi	06 Sep 1967	13 Feb 1969	Prime Minister	4th (1st)
7.	Dinesh Singh	14 Feb 1969	27 Jun 1970		4th (1st)
8.	Sardar Swaran Singh	27 Jun 1970	10 Oct 1974		4th 5th (2nd)
9.	Y B Chavan	10 Oct 1974	24 Mar 1977		5th (1st)
10.	Atal Bihari Vajpayee	26 Mar 1977	28 Jul 1979		6th (1st)
11.	Shyam Nandan Prasad Mishra	28 Jul 1979	13 Jan 1980		6th (1st)
12.	P V Narasimha Rao	14 Jan 1980	19 Jul 1984		7th (1st)
13.	Indira Gandhi	19 Jul 1984	31 Oct 1984	Prime Minister	7th (3rd)
14.	Rajiv Gandhi	31 Oct 1984	24 Sep 1985	Prime Minister	7th 8th (1st)
15.	Bali Ram Bhagat	25 Sep 1985	12 May 1986		8th (1st)
16.	P Shiv Shankar	12 May 1986	22 Oct 1986		8th (1st)
17.	N D Tiwari	22 Oct 1986	25 Jul 1987		8th (1st)
18.	Rajiv Gandhi	25 Jul 1987	25 Jun 1988	Prime Minister	8th (2nd)
19.	P V Narasimha Rao	25 Jun 1988	02 Dec 1989		8th (1st)
20.	Vishwanath Pratap Singh	02 Dec 1989	05 Dec 1989	Prime Minister	9th (1st)
21.	I K Gujral	05 Dec 1989	10 Nov 1990		9th (1st)
22.	Vidya Charan Shukla	21 Nov 1990	20 Feb 1991		9th (1st)
23.	Madhavsinh Solanki	21 Jun 1991	31 Mar 1992		10th (1st)
24.	P V Narasimha Rao	31 Mar 1992	18 Jan 1993	Prime Minister	10th (2nd)
25.	Dinesh Singh	18 Jan 1993	10 Feb 1995		10th (2nd)
26.	Pranab Mukherjee	10 Feb 1995	16 May 1996	Dy. Chairman Planning Commission	10th (1st)
27.	Sikander Bakht	21 May 1996	01 Jun 1996		11th (1st)
28.	I K Gujral	01 Jun 1996	18 May 1998		11th (2nd)
29.	Atal Bihari Vajpayee	19 May 1998	05 Dec 1998	Prime Minister	12th (2nd)
30.	Jaswant Singh	05 Dec 1998	23 Jun 2002		12th 13th (1st)
31.	Yashwant Sinha	01 Jul 2002	22 May 2004		13th (1st)
32.	Natwar Singh	22 May 2004 ^[2]	06 Nov 2005 ^[3]		14th (1st)
33.	Dr. Manmohan Singh	06 Nov 2005 ^[4]	24 Oct 2006 ^[5]	Prime Minister	14th (1st)
34.	Pranab Mukherjee	24 Oct 2006 ^[6]	Till Date		14th (2nd)

[edit] Deputy Foreign Ministers of India

No	Name	Took Office	Left Office	Other Positions
1.	Dr. B V Keshkar	07 Dec 1948	26 Jan 1950	Commonwealth Relations
2.	Dr. B V Keskar	31 Jan 1950	13 May 1952
3.	Anil K Chanda	12 Aug 1952	17 Apr 1957
4.	Dr.Syed Mahmud	07 Dec 1954	17 Apr 1957
5.	Laxmi N Menon	18 Apr 1957	10 Apr 1962
6.	Dinesh Singh	08 May 1962	24 Jan 1966
7.	Surendrapal Singh	18 Mar 1967	05 Feb 1973
8.	Bipinpal Das	17 Oct 1974	24 Mar 1977
9.	Digvijay Singh	29 Nov 1990	21 Jun 1991

[edit] Minister of State, External Affairs

No	Name	Took Office	Left Office
1.	Laxmi N Menon	16 Apr 1962	09 Sep 1964
2.	Laxmi N Menon	15 Jun 1964	24 Jan 1966
3.	Dinesh Singh	24 Jan 1966	13 Mar 1967
4.	Bali Ram Bhagat	14 Nov 1967	14 Feb 1969
5.	Surendrapal Singh	05 Feb 1973	10 Oct 1974
6.	Samarendra Kundu	16 Aug 1977	28 Jul 1979
7.	Bedabrata Barua	05 Aug 1979	13 Jan 1980
8.	A A Rahim	03 Sep 1982	31 Oct 1984
9.	Ram Niwas Mirdha	02 Aug 1984	31 Oct 1984
10.	A A Rahim	04 Nov 1984	31 Dec 1984
11.	Ram Niwas Mirdha	04 Nov 1984	31 Dec 1984
12.	Khurseed Alam Khan	31 Dec 1984	25 Sep 1985
13.	K R Narayanan	25 Sep 1985	22 Oct 1986
14.	Eduardo Falerio	12 May 1986	14 Feb 1988
15.	K Natwar Singh	22 Oct 1986	02 Dec 1989
16.	Prof. K K Tiwari	27 Jun 1988	04 Dec 1989
17.	Hari Kishore Singh	21 Apr 1990	10 Nov 1990
18.	Eduardo Falerio	21 Jun 1991	17 Jan 1993
19.	R L Bhatia	02 Jul 1992	16 May 1996
20.	Salman Khursheed	19 Jan 1993	16 May 1996
21.	Salim Iqbal Shervani	09 May 1997	19 Mar 1998
22.	Kamala Sinha	03 Jun 1997	19 Mar 1998
23.	Vasundhara Raje	19 Mar 1998	13 Oct 1999
24.	Ajit Kumar Panja	13 Oct 1999	15 Mar 2001
25.	U V Krishnam Raju	30 Sep 2000	22 Jul 2001
26.	Omar Abdullah	23 Jul 2001	23 Dec 2002
27.	Digvijay Singh	01 Jul 2002	22 May 2004
28.	Vinod Khanna	29 Jan 2003	22 May 2004
29.	K. Natwar Singh	22 May 2004	29 Jan 2006
30.	Anand Sharma	29 Jan 2006	current