Nirmal Mukarji

N K Mukarji
Governor of Punjab
In office 8 December 1989 – 14 June 1990
Preceded by	Siddharta Shankar Ray
Succeeded by	Virendra Verma
13th Cabinet Secretary of India
In office 1977–1980
Prime Minister	Morarji Desai Charan Singh Indira Gandhi
Preceded by	B.D.Pande
Succeeded by	S.S.Grewal
Personal details
Born	Nirmal Kumar Mukarji New Delhi, India
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	St. Stephen's College, Delhi Harvard University

Nirmal Kumar Mukarji (9 January 1921 – 29 August 2002) was an Indian administrator and the last member of the Indian Civil Service to serve. In the course of a long career he was Home Secretary, Cabinet Secretary, and eventually Governor of Punjab. He died in 2002.

Born in Delhi to Satyanand Mukarji, Principal of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, Mukarji was educated at St. Stephen's and subsequently entered the ICS at the top of the last intake, in 1943.

Assigned to the Punjab cadre, he was assigned as the confidential secretary of the Governor of Punjab, a post that he held till Independence in 1947. As part of the assignment, he was privy to most discussions involving the Partition of the Punjab between India and Pakistan, and part of the team that divided government resources between the two new Punjabs. Choosing to join India in 1947, he was appointed District Collector in a number of sensitive border districts, particularly Ferozepur.

After serving his time in the districts, he was moved to Delhi where he was put in charge of the Ministry for Irrigation, which at the time was planning the Bhakra-Nangal Dam, a project dear to Jawaharlal Nehru's heart. After the commissioning of the dam, he was moved back to Punjab and then to Jammu and Kashmir as Chief Secretary of those two states, after spending two years at Harvard's Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs It was as Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir that he had to organise the defence of the state during the Bangladesh War of 1971.

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