Riaz Hamidullah appointed as Bangladesh’s new envoy to India

M Riaz Hamidullah, currently an additional foreign secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and a former ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, has been appointed Bangladesh’s new High Commissioner to India.

New Delhi accepted Bangladesh’s agreemo in November 2024 following the Indian Ocean Conference in Muscat, Oman.

He is expected to assume his new role in March.

Nurul Islam, the current deputy high commissioner and acting high commissioner, will return to Dhaka. In his place, Priti Rahman will take over as the new deputy high commissioner in New Delhi.

Hamidullah joined the Bangladesh Civil Service (foreign affairs cadre) in 1995 as part of the 15th batch. Over the years, he has served in key diplomatic positions, including at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations from 1999 to 2003 and the Bangladesh High Commission in India from 2003 to 2005.

From 2008 to 2011, he served as a SAARC Secretariat director in Kathmandu.

In 2011, he was appointed MoFA director general and was concurrently accredited as Bangladesh’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

He later served as high commissioner to Sri Lanka and Ambassador to the Netherlands.

He was Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Hamidullah completed his undergraduate degree in Economics at Aligarh Muslim University in 1993 and earned his Master’s in Economics from Dhaka University in 1995.

In 2024, he organised an event at Leiden University to mark International Mother Language Day, reflecting Bangladesh’s commitment to promoting its linguistic and cultural heritage on the global stage.