India's Ambassador to Israel Sanjeev Singla, February 2021 (Embassy of India) India’s Ambassador to Israel Sanjeev Singla took up his position in Tel Aviv in October 2019, not long before the coronavirus pandemic started sweeping the world. This is his second post in Israel – his first , as a counsellor at the embassy, was an eight-month stint ending July 2014, at which time he was called back to India to become private secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for five years. Now, at the helm of the local embassy, he is steering efforts to build on the already close ties between the Asian giant and the so-called Startup Nation. But lockdowns and an inability to hold face-to-face meetings has hindered progress in negotiations for a preferential trade agreement between the countries, and he hasn’t seen his wife, Nandini Singla, a fellow diplomat who is currently India’s High Commissioner to Mauritius, since November because of the pandemic.