S.K. Lambah
Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of India
Satinder K Lambah was born in Peshawar (now in Pakistan) on July 16, 1941. He holds a master’s in history from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1964. Over a diplomatic career spanning more than four decades, he has experience of working in several Indian missions across the globe. Satinder K Lambah has also been Ambassador of India to Hungary (1986-89); High Commissioner of India to Pakistan (1992-95); Ambassador of India to Germany (1995-98); Ambassador of India to the Russian Federation (1998-2001). He was Deputy Secretary General of the 7th Non Aligned Summit held in Delhi in 1983 and later Coordinator of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments meeting in India. His specialization has been in dealing with India’s neighbours. He opened the Indian Embassy in Bangladesh, after liberation. After retirement from the India Foreign Service in August 2001, he chaired a Committee on the Reorganization of the Ministry of External Affairs and India’s Missions Abroad. From November 2001 to July 2002, he was India’s special envoy for Afghanistan. During 2004-05 he was the Convener of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) Government of India. During 2011-12, he was Co-Chairman of the Task Force on National Security. Since 2005, he is Special Envoy in the Office of the Prime Minister of India. He was also elected President of Federation of Indo-German Societies in India. During his tenure as Consul General of India in San Francisco (1989-91) he was conferred a “Trustees’ Citation” by the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 for his initiating, coordinating, and spearheading the campaign which generated over US$2 million in a short span of four months for Indian Studies, resulting in the creation of two Chairs of India Studies, a bi-annual lecture by a distinguished scholar from India, and an annual scholarship at the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C Berkeley. He is married to Nilima Lambah, author of “A Life Across Three Continents – Recollections of a Diplomat’s Wife”. They have two children.
