P. N. Haksar

P. N. Haksar
Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission
In office 4 January 1975 – 31 May 1977
Prime Minister	Indira Gandhi
1st Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of India
In office 6 December 1971 – 28 February 1973
Prime Minister	Indira Gandhi
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	V. Shankar
2nd Secretary to the Prime Minister of India
In office 1967 – 5 December 1971
Preceded by	Lakshmi Kant Jha
Succeeded by	Office temporarily abolished
Personal details
Born	Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar (1913-09-04)September 4, 1913 Gujranwala, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan)
Died	November 25, 1998(1998-11-25) (aged 85) New Delhi, Delhi, India
Spouse	Urmila Sapru
Children	Nandita Haksar, Anamika 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 his inexperienced prime minister's rise to near-absolute power in the mid-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". Prior to this, Haksar was a diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service, who served as India's ambassador to Austria and Nigeria.