Thiruvananthapuram, The Pinarayi Vijayan government on Wednesday decided to appoint senior bureaucrat V.P. Joy as the new chief secretary of the state.

Joy is an electronics engineer by profession and passed out of the College of Engineering here in 1985 and became a bureaucrat in 1987.

He has served in numerous positions here as well as at the Centre, besides having a term as the Provident Fund Commissioner.

He will take over from incumbent Chief Secretary Viswas Mehta on March 1 and will hold the top bureaucratic post till June 30, 2023, when he retires.

Mehta, meanwhile, has got a new posting as the Chief Information Commissioner.