List of Secretaries-General of SAARC

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established in Dhaka on 8 December 1985. Originally there were 7 members in the SAARC. Afghanistan became the 8^th member of the SAARC organisation in the summit held in the Dhaka in November 2005. Currently there are 8 members in the SAARC organisation i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

SAARC member comprises 21% of the world's population, 3% of the world's area, and 3.8% (US$2.9 trillion) of the global economy, as on 2015. The Secretariat of the Association was set up in Kathmandu on 17 January 1987.

From the 1985 till date there have been 13 Secretaries-General of the SAARC. There are just two Indians i.e. Kant Kishore Bhargava and Sheel Kant Sharma are the only Indians who has been at the post of Secretaries-General of the SAARC.

Now let’s see the list of Secretaries-General of the SAARC;

Name	Country	Tenure
1. Abul Ahsan	Bangladesh	16 January 1985 to 15 October 1989
2. Kant Kishore Bhargava	India	17 October 1989 to 31 December 1991
3. Ibrahim Hussein Zaki	Maldives	1January 1992 to   31 December 1993
4. Yadav Kant Silwal	Nepal	1 January 1994 to  31 December 1995
5. Naeem U. Hasan	Pakistan	1 January 1996 to  31 December 1998
6. Nihal Rodrigo	Sri Lanka	1 January 1999 to  10 January 2002
7. Q. A. M. A. Rahim	Bangladesh	11 January 2002 to 28 February 2005
8. Chenkyab Dorji	Bhutan	1 March 2005 to     29 February 2008
9. Sheel Kant Sharma	India	1 March 2008 to     28 February 2011
10.Fathimath Dhiyana Saeed	Maldives	1 March 2011 to     11 March 2012
11. Ahmed Saleem	Maldives	12 March 2012 to   28 February 2014
12. Arjun Bahadur Thapa	Nepal	1 March 2014 to     28 February 2017
13. Amjad Hussain B Sial	Pakistan	1 March 2017 to present

From the above table it can be inferred that the Abul Ahsan of the Bangladesh was the first secretary general of SAARC. Out of 8 SAARC members; Maldives is the only country whose 3 peoples have served as the secretary general of SAARC.