ISLAMABAD  -  A grade-21 officer of the Pakistan Admin­istrative Service Asa­dur Rehman Gilani has been appointed as the new principal secre­tary to the prime min­ister. The appointment is a start of reshuffle in the bureaucracy from top level which will eventually go down in coming days. Sources inside the Establish­ment Division said that there was a likelihood of the change of several federal secretaries and heads of autonomous bodies. The establish­ment division on Mon­day issued notifications in which the Secretary to the Prime Minister Captain Retired Khur­ram Agha was removed from his position and posted as Secretary Commerce Division. 

Meanwhile, Asadur Rehaman Gilani was appointed as new Prin­cipal Secretary to the Prime Minister, who was earlier serving as the Secretary in charge in the Petroleum Di­vision. Gilani is con­sidered as very close to the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as he served in Punjab as well prior to joining the federal government.

He belongs to 24th comon of the Civil Ser­vice of Pakistan and joined the service in 1996. He is consid­ered as a thorough gentleman amongst circles and he had a privilege to work on multiple sectors. Dur­ing his more than 27 years long career, he served in provincial governments of Balo­chistan, Punjab, be­sides serving the Fed­eral government. He has been involved in running the transport, environment, housing, food and agriculture departments in Pun­jab. He remained the secretary of the home, law, prosecution the local government department in Balo­chistan. He remained the deputy commis­sioner of Sheikhupura district and commis­sioner of Zhob Divi­sion. His longest stint of 4 years was at the Energy Department in Punjab where he led the initiative to add about 10,000 MW to the national grid to rid the country of elec­tricity outages. 

Gilani has degrees in Public Administra­tion from the Harvard Kennedy School (Har­vard University) and Medicine from the King Edward Medical Uni­versity in Lahore. He completed an Edward S. Mason Fellowship in Public Policy from Har­vard University in 2009.

He also participated in a summer course of International Political Economy at London School of Economics. He also has taken various trainings and courses in the USA and Pakistan. He writes on the issues of current affairs and policy designs in the public sector. He also delivers lectures on Ad­ministrative and Gover­nance issues in various public and private sec­tor institutions.