With Intelligence Bureau chief Tapan Deka set to complete four years at the helm of India’s domestic intelligence agency by the end of June 2026, discussion in strategic and bureaucratic circles has increasingly shifted towards possible future leadership scenarios inside the organisation.
Deka was first appointed Director of the Intelligence Bureau on 1st July 2022. He subsequently received his first one-year extension in 2024 and a second one-year extension in 2025, taking his current notified tenure to 30th June 2026. If he completes the present term, he will have served four years as head of the Intelligence Bureau.
Among the names being spoken about in those conversations is Annalamada Sunil Achaya, a senior intelligence officer whose career has spanned internal intelligence, external intelligence and overseas assignments. He is a 1991 batch Nagaland cadre IPS officer.
Achaya, 59, is from Kodagu (Coorg), Karnataka and is currently serving as Special Secretary in the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), a position widely regarded within the intelligence structure as placing an officer at the second level of the organisation’s leadership hierarchy.
His profile has attracted attention because of the sequence of assignments across India’s intelligence system.
Before moving to R&AW in July 2019, Achaya served in the Intelligence Bureau and also worked as a staff officer to then IB chief Rajiv Jain. That phase of his career placed him inside India’s internal intelligence structure and exposed him to senior-level institutional functioning and coordination.
After moving to R&AW, Achaya rose through the organisation to become Special Secretary.
He has also served as Consul General in Geneva, Switzerland, in the recent past adding overseas and diplomatic experience to his intelligence background.
His name had also figured in discussions around senior intelligence appointments during the period in which Parag Jain was eventually appointed chief of R&AW.
Alongside Achaya, there have also been discussions in some circles that Mahesh Dixit, a 1993-batch Maharashtra cadre IPS officer who is associated with the Intelligence Bureau, could emerge as another possible name in the eventual succession conversation for the top IB post.
Sources said that Sapna Tewari, a 1992 batch IPS batch officer of Odisha cadre, who is presently Special Director with the Intelligence Bureau, is also among those in contention. If she is selected, then she would be the first woman to lead the IB. This will also be in line with the government ‘s thrust on woman empowerment at different levels.
At this stage, no official announcement has been made regarding any future appointment to lead the Intelligence Bureau, and any discussion around succession remains speculative until a formal government order is issued.
