NEW DELHI: People in India are now quite familiar with Lav Agarwal, the Joint Secretary Department of Health and Family Welfare, who has been rendering information related to the Coronavirus outbreak cases in India on television on a daily basis. Apart from giving updates the quiet spoken IAS officer has been deftly handling queries from the media and defending the government's actions on daily basis. However, what people do not know is that Lav Agarwal is a 1996 Batch IAS officer from the erstwhile United Andhra Pradesh cadre.

Agarwal who hails from Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh completed his BTech in Mechanical engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi before joining the Civil Services. He belongs to Andhra Pradesh cadre where he worked extensively in education and health sectors before being posted at the Centre in 2016.

After his training in 1997, he was appointed as Assistant Collector of Krishna district and later he worked as assistant collector at Bhadrachalam in Khammam.

He worked as a project officer for Rural Development department in Medak and served as Joint Collector of the same district in June 2000.

In 2003, he worked as the Joint Collector and Joint Chief Electoral Officer in Nellore district.

He worked as Secretary at the CMO during the tenure of the then chief minister Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy between 2004 to 2005.

From 2005 to 2007, he was posted as West Godavari Collector. He conducted Operation Kolleru, which was meant for upliftment of underprivileged people on the advice of chief minister Dr YSR.

Later he was appointed as EPDCL CMD and also served as Visakhapatnam District Collector. He was also the Director of the Board of Intermediate Education between 2007 and 2008.

Rising in stature for his hard work he was posted in his current role at the centre in the year 2016Senior bureaucrats and colleagues are all in praise for Agarwal who has shown remarkable maturity in handling the COVID-19 crisis in India.

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