Virendra Dayal was born on 29January1935 and is a retired Indian Administrative Service officer and United Nations civil servant who served as Chef de Cabinet to Secretary General of the United Nations for more than a decade.
13 Facts About Virendra Dayal
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Virendra Dayal has served as the director of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs of the United Nations and as the special envoy who probed the allegations levelled against a number of India politicians including Natwar Singh, a former Minister of External affairs, in the Paul Volcker Committee report of 2005.
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Virendra Dayal was selected for the Rhodes Scholarship for the year, which assisted him in pursuing his higher studies at University College at the University of Oxford, which he completed in 1958.
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Virendra Dayal is married to Indira Gupta and the couple has twodaughters, Divya and Jaya.
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Virendra Dayal is known to have worked for the rehabilitation of the refugees during his stint at Nainital and after two more DM postings at Rampur and Moradabad districts, he was transferred to the Government of India.
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In 1962, when Nobel laureate, V S Naipaul, and his wife, Patricia, visited India, Dayal hosted the Trinidadian and Tobagonian couple.
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Virendra Dayal continued at the post during the tenure of the next secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, until his retirement from UN service in 1993.
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Virendra Dayal was involved in two diplomatic missions to South Africa, accompanying Cyrus Vance, former United States Secretary of State in July1992 and then visiting the country as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General in September1992.
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In 1990, Virendra Dayal was proposed to become United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees by the UN secretary-general, Javier Perez de Cuellar, but, Virendra Dayal's nomination was blocked by the United States due to opposition from Ronald Reagan, the country's president.
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Virendra Dayal returned to India in 1993 and soon was included in the Indian delegation to the Vienna Conference on Human Rights of June1993 which precipitated the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.
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Virendra Dayal served as a commissioner on the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, a UN appointed commission which submitted its final report in 1998.
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Virendra Dayal reportedly submitted fournotes of his findings in 2005 and 2006, based on 1,200pages of documents received from the United Nations, but, the reports were never published as the Supreme Court of India, after protracted litigation, accepted the contention of the Prime Minister's Office that the contents could only be used for investigation of possible violations of law.
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Virendra Dayal is currently serving as the chairperson of the scholarship selection committee of Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, and is the chair of the board of trustees of Rajeshwar Susheela Virendra Dayal Charitable Trust.