Janardan Prasad has been appointed as the new Director General of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), an official said.
Mr. Prasad, who took charge of the 174-year-old institution on June 1, succeeds Dr. S. Raju, who has held the post since April 2022.
Mr. Prasad is an MSc in Geology from Patna University and joined GSI, Gandhinagar, as a geologist in 1988.
He was also posted in Shillong, Patna, Faridabad, Ranchi and Hyderabad in various capacities.
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Before this assignment, he held the post of Additional Director General and Head of Department (ADG & HoD) for the southern region since June 2020 and was also chairman of the Technical-cum- Cost Committee (TCC), National Mineral Exploration Trust, New Delhi.
Mr. Prasad is experienced in metallogeny and mineral exploration studies and has been part of extensive mineral exploration work in Saurashtra and other areas of Gujarat in commodities like limestone, gold, base metal, PGE (platinum group elements) and bauxite.
Incidentally, he was part of the Justice M.B. Shah Commission for inquiry into illegal mining of iron and manganese in Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where the Central and State governments were incurring huge revenue losses.
The GSI, an attached office to the Ministry of Mines, is headquartered in the city and has six regional offices, in Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Shillong and Kolkata.
