EARLY LIFE

• Doval was born in 20 January 1945 in Ghiri Banelsyun village in Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand. Doval’s father was an officer in the Indian Army.
• He received his early education at the Ajmer Military School in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He graduated with a master’s degree in economics from the University of Agra in 1967.
• After graduation he started preparing for IPS.

OPERATIONS

• During the Mizo National Front (MNF) insurgency, Doval won over six of Laldenga’s seven commanders.
• He was inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1988 before Operation Black Thunder to collect critical information.
• Doval spent six years in Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan. He went to Kashmir in 1990 and persuaded militants to become counter-insurgents targeting hardline anti-India terrorists. This set the way for state elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996
• Doval joined the IPS in 1968 in the Kerala cadre. He was actively involved in anti-insurgency operations in Mizoram and Punjab.
• Doval was one of three negotiators who negotiated the release of passengers from IC-814 in Kandahar in 1999.
• Uniquely, he has the experience of being involved in the termination of all 15 hijackings of Indian Airlines aircraft from 1971–1999.
• In the headquarters, he headed IB’s operations wing for over a decade and was founder Chairman of the Multi Agency Centre (MAC), as well as of the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI)

RETIREMENT

• Doval retired in January 2005 as Director, Intelligence Bureau. In December 2009, he became the founding Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation.
• Doval has remained actively involved in the discourse on national security in India. Besides writing editorial pieces for several leading newspapers and journals, he has delivered lectures on India’s security challenges and foreign policy objectives at several renowned government and non-governmental institutions.
• In 2009 and 2011 he co-wrote two reports on “Indian Black Money Abroad In Secret Banks and Tax Havens“.

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

• On 30 May 2014, Doval was appointed as India’s fifth National Security Advisor.
• In June 2014, Doval played a crucial role in ensuring the secure return of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq.
• Although, the exact circumstances of their release are unclear, on 5 July 2014, ISIS militants handed the nurses to authorities at Erbil city and two specially arranged planes by the Indian Government brought them back home to Kochi.

• Along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, Doval planned a military operation against militants operating out of Myanmar. The mission was said to be a success with 50 militant casualties.
• He is widely credited for the doctrinal shift in Indian national security policy in relation to Pakistan. Switching from ‘Defensive’ to ‘Defensive Offensive’ as well as the ‘Double Squeeze Strategy.‘

NSA

• It is speculated that the September 2016 Indian surgical strikes in Pakistan were his brain child, which were extremely effective in neutralizing targets hostile to India
• Doval is widely credited along with Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Indian Ambassador to China Vijay Keshav Gokhale, for resolving Doklam Standoff through diplomatic channels and negotiation

 AWARDS

• Doval was the youngest police officer to receive the Police Medal for meritorious service. He was given the award after six years in the police (the norm is at least 17 years’ service).
• He was later awarded the President’s Police Medal.
• In 1988, Doval was granted one of the highest gallantry awards, the Kirti Chakra, becoming the first police officer to receive a medal previously given only as a military honour.