The name of Defense Secretary Dr. Ajay Kumar is 31st in the list of '50 influential Indians 2020' released by Fame India magazine. Defense Secretary Ajay Kumar, who has successfully organized Defense Expo to promote 'Make in India' in the field of defense production, is known as an excellent working secretary. He has replaced Sanjay Mitra. Sanjay Mitra completed his term in June 2019. The tenure of the Cabinet Secretary, Home Secretary, Foreign Affairs Secretary and Defense Secretary is two years. Ajay Kumar has become the defense secretary on 23 August 2019. After becoming the Secretary of Defense, Ajay Kumar expressed the hope that by 2025, India will join the 5 major defense hardware producers in the world by boosting production locally.

Ajay Kumar is a 1985 batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre. He was born on 2 October 1962 in Uttar Pradesh and studied electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur. He is the 39th Defense Production Secretary of India. Ajay Kumar has held various positions like Government of India and Government of Kerala, Principal Secretary (Information Technology), Managing Director of Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation, Secretary (Industry), Kerala State Co-Managing Director. He also gave three decades of his service to the Kerala state government, where he headed three different departments.

He has been appointed as the Union Defense Secretary. Ajay Kumar has done Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He received a Master of Science in Development Economics from the University of Minnesota, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration from Carlson.

PM Modi had said about India becoming self-reliant recently but Ajay Kumar had said this long before. He had said, "Where our country was completely import-dependent, today it has become self-sufficient." While explaining it's reason, he said, "Our mobile phone production business was of Rs. 19,000 crores in 2014, which has increased to Rs. 90,000 crores today." 

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