Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra

Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra, 1973

Maharaj Krishna Rasgotra (M K Rasgotra) is an Indian diplomat and former Indian Foreign Secretary and a recipient of Padma Bhushan award.

He was born 11 September 1924,and received an MA in English from Punjab University.

He was Tutor at Government College,Lahore, 1944-46; Head of the English Department at SA College for Women, Sialkot, 1946; Head of the English Department at Arya College, Ludhiana, 1947; appointed to the Punjab Educational Service in March 1948; Lecturer in English, Govt. College, Ludhiana 1948-49. He was appointed to the Indian Foreign Service on 27 September 1949. In his later career, he was India's high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and Ambassador to Morocco, Tunisia, the Netherlands, Nepal, France and UNESCO. ^[1]

He was the foreign secretary during the Bhopal gas disaster. It is claimed by the then Deputy Chief of Mission of the US embassy in New Delhi in 1984, in an interview with a news channel, that communications between the Government of India and himself relating to the release of Warren Anderson (of Union Carbide) to return to the US went through the foreign secretary. ^[2] In a subsequent interview with Karan Thapar, Mr Rasgotra held that releasing Warren Anderson was the right thing to do, since he had been earlier promised safe passage.^[3]

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