New Delhi: Lt General KJS Dhillon will take charge as the Director General of Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Intelligence) having been the Commanding Officer of the strategic XV Corps of Army last year, official sources said.

It is a department that comes under the Chief of Defence Staff in the newly created Department of Military Affairs.

The 57-year-old Lt Gen Dhillon, who is from the 1983 batch of the Indian Military Academy, recently handed over the charge of XV Corps to Lt Gen B S Raju.

The order for Lt Gen Dhillon, who has been credited with several successful people friendly operations last year, has been issued and he will assume charge soon.

He will be heading an organisation which is responsible for collating technical as well as human intelligence for the three armed forces, sources said.

The DIA was created in 2002 on recommendations of a Group of Ministers (GoMs) which looked into lapses leading to the Kargil intrusion in 1999.

The DIA is a nodal agency for all defence related intelligence which collects information technically as well as through satellites to safeguard the interest of the country.

The DIA also forms part of the Multi Agency Centre (MAC), an umbrella of organisations which looks into infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Lt Gen Dhillon’s tenure at XV Corps began on a challenging note as within a week of his taking over in February last year, the nation witnessed a terror attack on its security forces in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed when a suicide bomber targeted their convoy in Pulwama on February 14.