P. N. Haksar

Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar (4 September 1913 – 25 November 1998) was an Indian bureaucrat and diplomat, best known for his two-year stint as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's principal secretary (1971–73). In that role, Haksar was the chief strategist and policy adviser behind Gandhi's early years and her establishment of strong authority in the 1970s. After this he was appointed deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and then the first-ever chancellor of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

An advocate of centralisation and socialism, he was a Kashmiri Pandit who became Gandhi's closest confidant in her inner coterie of bureaucrats, the so-called "Kashmiri mafia". Before this, Haksar was a diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service, who served as India's ambassador to Austria and Nigeria. Provided by Wikipedia