MUMBAI: Swapnil Thorat, an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer of the 2017 batch from Mumbai, assumed charge as the city’s Regional Passport Officer (RPO) on Tuesday. Thorat succeeds the outgoing RPO, Dr Arjun Deore (IFS 2013), and will oversee passport services for Mumbai and parts of Maharashtra under the jurisdiction of the Mumbai RPO. He was posted in South Korea from 2018 to 2023, where he served as in-charge of the Trade and Investment and Public Diplomacy departments at the Embassy of India. He also worked in the Finance Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, for almost two and a half years. Thorat will continue to hold the additional charge of Head of the MEA Branch Secretariat in Mumbai, a role he took on in December 2025. He holds a Master’s degree in Biotechnology from Mumbai University and briefly worked in cancer research at the Advanced Cancer Treatment Research and Education Centre (ACTREC) in Navi Mumbai.
