An IIT- IIM graduate who left her finance career in the UK to join the civil services recalls the people, files and moments that stayed with her after her decision to resign in August 2026
In the summer of 2023, in a remote hill village in Mirzapur, an elderly woman stood by a newly installed tap that brought water for the first time in living memory. She said nothing. She simply raised her trembling hands, touched the head of the district magistrate and blessed her.
That would stay with Divya Mittal long after the files she carried were closed and the postings she held changed.
Thirteen years ago, Mittal had been working in London. After studying a degree in engineering physics at IIT Delhi and completing her MBA at IIM Bangalore, she joined JP Morgan as an associate, handling complex derivatives. For her it was a fitting end to a stellar academic and professional journey. But something felt missing. Being away from India troubled her. In her own words, her education, confidence and ability to walk with her head held high anywhere in the world felt like a debt she owed to this soil. She wanted to make her handprints on the bricks that would build the India she had dreamed of. So she returned.
She prepared for the civil services without formal coaching. In her first attempt in 2012 she qualified for the Indian Police Service. She appeared again the next year and secured All India Rank 68, joining the Indian Administrative Service in the 2013 batch, allotted to the Uttar Pradesh cadre. She joined the service on September 2013.
Her early postings took her through the normal training and subordinate roles: sub-divisional magistrate in Sitapur and Meerut, a short stint as assistant secretary at NITI Aayog where she presented ideas on citizen-centric monitoring, chief development officer in Gonda, joint managing director at the UP State Industrial Development Corporation. Then came a longer assignment as vice-chairperson of the Bareilly Development Authority from early 2019 to September 2020. When she took charge the authority had a substantial bank loan of around ₹32 crore. Over the next 19 months the debt was cleared as well as long pending land compensation to farmers began to move. The work was technical and often quiet but it restored a measure of financial breathing room to the organisation.
It was the postings in districts that led her into the daily texture of people’s lives. As district magistrate of Sant Kabir Nagar for nearly two years, then Mirzapur from September 2022 to September 2023, and later Deoria from July 2024 to May 2026, Mittal moved from offices and scheme documents to villages, complaints and the slow work of making systems respond.
In Mirzapur one problem stood outLahuriadah (also referred to as Lahuria Dah or Lahuriya Deh), a village of roughly 1,200 people in the rocky hills of Halia block, had never received regular piped water since the time of Independence. Residents relied on a spring that dried in summer and expensive tankers. Earlier attempts, including a project costing several crores had failed. Technical experts had considered the terrain too difficult. Mittal visited, brought in geophysicists and engineers from Banaras Hindu University, combined leftover infrastructure with a revised design and pushed a new proposal under the Jal Jeevan Mission. In late August 2023 the pipes brought water to homes. She turned on a tap herself, the elderly woman’s silent blessing became the image she later carried with her.
In Deoria the challenge was different: Large stretches of government land – roads, drains, ponds, paths between fields – had been under illegal occupation for years. In March 2025 the administration launched Operation Kabza Mukti. Instead of relying solely on force, the administration used public meetings, measurement, persuasion and voluntary compliance. Over the following weeks more than 900 instances of encroachment were cleared across hundreds of villages without reported violence or major confrontation. In one village, reclaimed land was redistributed to 137 landless families from the Musahar community. Public spaces reopened, pathways that had been blocked for decades became usable again. Mittal described the campaign as having become a people’s movement, rather than a purely official exercise.
Across these postings, her working style, as reflected in contemporary reports and her own social-media updates, emphasised direct contact. She held public meetings in remote areas, used social media to share scheme details and respond to complaints and saw files as connected to specific peoplefamilies waiting for land rights, persons with disabilities seeking dignity, farmers seeking water. She later wrote that the true peace of the work showed in the eyes of those who finally received what was long due.
By May 2026 she had been posted to special secretary in the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Department in Lucknow. On 30 August 2026 she announced her voluntary resignation on X. The post, written in Hindi, reviewed the journey without drama. She described growing up in modest surroundings, the years in London, the sense of incompleteness, the return, the lessons of the districts: Deoria – that standing with what was right is a duty, not an option; Mirzapur – that “impossible” is only an opinion. She recalled the families who received land rights for the first time, the person with disability who found dignity, the farmer whose fields got water. “I was foolish to think I had come to give something,” she wrote. “The truth is, I received the most.” She ended with the memory of the elderly woman in Lahuriadah and a quiet statement that while the position might end, the touch and the dream given by the country’s soil would remain.
In subsequent comments to reporters she said the decision was considered, driven by priorities, interests and family responsibilities. She is a mother of two daughters. She stated there was no sudden trigger or external pressure. The resignation remains subject to formal acceptance by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on the recommendation of the state government. Speculation about the possibility of a political entry had circulated in some reports, Mittal herself said she had no plans announced and would speak about her future when the time came. Sources close to her mentioned possible interest in academics and writing, but she has not confirmed any specific next step.
Thirteen years is a substantial stretch of public service. It took an IIT-IIM graduate from the trading floors of London into the dusty lanes of eastern Uttar Pradesh, into the slow negotiations over water pipelines and encroached pathways, into the everyday work of translating government schemes into something tangible for people who rarely appear in headlines. The files closed, the postings changed. What remains is the record of those who received land, water or a clearer path and the memory of a quiet blessing on a hillside that one officer chose to carry with her when she walked away.
@Rohit Manral