New Delhi: Rear Admiral SM Urooj Athar has assumed charge as principal of the Indian Naval Academy (INA) at Ezhimala in Kerala, taking over one of the Indian Navy’s most consequential postings in officer training and professional military education. The academy confirmed the appointment through an X post post on Sunday, days after Vice Admiral Alok Ananda took over as the institution’s 13th commandant.
A naval officer commissioned in February 1992, RAdm Athar brings more than 34 years of service that combines sea-going postings with academic leadership and a specialized scientific background. He graduated in electronics engineering from Aligarh Muslim University and went on to specialize in meteorology, oceanography and satellite meteorology.
Career in operations and instruction
That scientific grounding was sharpened further at the India Meteorological Department in Pune and the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, where he studied environmental and satellite-based inputs relevant to maritime operations. Such expertise has increasingly fed into how the Navy plans deployments in a domain where weather and ocean conditions can decide outcomes.
RAdm Athar also holds higher military qualifications from the College of Defence Management at Secunderabad and the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington – both regarded as staging posts for officers marked out for senior leadership. Before moving to Ezhimala, he headed the Directorate of Naval Education at Naval Headquarters in New Delhi, where he worked on updating training curricula and education policy across the service.
He additionally served as commodore (naval education) and vice-chairperson of the Naval Education Society, the body that runs the Navy’s network of schools and educational institutions across the country. That grounding in institutional education is expected to inform his approach at the academy, which trains cadets destined for every branch of the service.
Principal’s role
The post of principal at the Indian Naval Academy is distinct from that of commandant, with the latter serving as the institution’s overall head and answerable to Naval Headquarters on matters of command and administration. The principal, by contrast, is responsible chiefly for academic instruction and training curricula, working alongside the commandant to run the institution from day to day.
The commandant’s chair changed hands almost simultaneously, with Ananda taking over on Saturday from Vice Admiral Manish Chadha. Ananda, commissioned in 1993 and a specialist in navigation and direction, had most recently commanded the Eastern Fleet at Visakhapatnam before his move to Ezhimala.
The Indian Naval Academy at Ezhimala, spread along the Kerala coast, is the Navy’s foremost establishment for training officer cadets, combining military, academic, physical and leadership instruction. It commissions cadets from the executive, engineering, electrical and other branches, preparing them for service across the surface fleet, submarines and naval aviation.
With India’s maritime priorities increasingly shaped by the security environment in the Indian Ocean region, the Navy has repeatedly signalled that the quality of officer training at Ezhimala is central to its long-term readiness. Rear Admiral Urooj Athar’s combination of operational service, scientific training and education administration places him within that broader effort to modernize how future officers are prepared.