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LONDON: An Indian-born British civil servant has found himself unwittingly under fire on social media over the controversial Chagos deal.Dr Francis Vijay Narasimhan Rangarajan was born in Delhi and educated at Cambridge University where he obtained a master’s in maths and PhD in astrophysics.Since March 2024 he has been chief executive of the Electoral Commission. Before that he led the negotiations over the Chagos deal in his role as a director-general at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The Chagos deal, agreed in May 2025, is opposed by the Conservatives and Reform UK, and a large number of the British public.On Sunday night Rangarajan’s name was trending alongside “Chagos Deal” on X after it was revealed he negotiated the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, which Britain owns, to Mauritius, and then pay Mauritius millions of pounds a year to lease back the strategic Diego Garcia military base, used by US and UK forces.At the time of going to press, the FCDO had not responded to a request for comment.Journalist and former Tory MEP Daniel Hannan wrote on X: “Every former minister I have spoken to blames the Chagos fiasco on Vijay Rangarajan, the relevant FCDO official. But, in Britain, civil servants are never blamed for anything and, indeed, he is now running the Electoral Commission, which makes MPs reluctant to criticise him.”Former Tory MP Douglas Carswell wrote on X: “Vijay Rangarajan should be summoned to the bar of the House to explain his asinine deal.” British political commentator Nick Dixon commented: “So we let an Indian give away our territory to a majority Indian country? Did we lose a war or something?”An account called “Basil the Great”, with 265k followers, wrote: “INDIAN CIVIL SERVANT BEHIND CHAGOS DEAL. Vijay Rangarajan born in New Delhi has been revealed as the man behind the whole Chagos islands fiasco. An Indian giving away British territory to Mauritius, a majority Indian state. WHY ARE FOREIGNERS RULING OVER US?”The Chagos negotiating team, led by Rangarajan, “overstepped its brief and offered Mauritius too much”. “Officials were freewheeling,” said one political source, according to the UK Times.Last week US president Donald Trump had said giving away the land was “an act of great stupidity”.Although the treaty handing over sovereignty was signed in May 2025, the bill has not been ratified in UK’s parliament. The Tories on Friday tabled a motion in the House of Lords requiring the govt to confirm that the Chagos deal did not breach the existing 1966 UK-US treaty governing the use of Diego Garcia. Later that day the bill was removed from Monday’s order paper.India supports the deal. Last Sept PM Modi had called the Chagos deal “a historic milestone for Mauritius’s sovereignty”.
