Taranjit Singh Sandhu, a veteran of India-US ties with decades of on-and-off experience dealing with it, is expected to be named shortly as Indian ambassador to Washington DC, succeeding Harsh Vardhan Shringla, a batchmate and college hockey teammate from St Stephen’s.

Shringla rotated out of Washington DC this week to start as the new foreign secretary in New Delhi and Sandhu will arrive here from Sri Lanka, where he, as ambassador, is credited with putting India back in the reckoning as the island nation’s most important partner, elbowing out the aggressive Chinese.

Sandhu’s long and in-the-ring experience of dealing with the relationship spanning decades across two previous postings here had made him a popular choice for the person Washington DC most wanted to see and receive as the next ambassador, among think-tankers, past and present congressional aides of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and officials, many of whom he had worked with and struck lasting relationships.

A former congressional aide who went on to hold senior administration position recalled working with Sandhu from his first stint in DC as a political officer at the Indian embassy in the late 1990s. “Among other things, Taranjit grew to understand the Hill the best, with his ability to work with both parties,” the person said, referring to Capitol Hill, home to US congress.

That has been probably the most turbulent period in the India-US relationship, rocked by the 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests conducted by the Vajpayee government and the resulting shock and outrage felt in several capitals around the world, and in DC. The United States had followed that up with severe sanctions, mandated by congress.

Led by then Indian ambassador, the very politically astute Naresh Chandra, a former cabinet secretary and the last Indian Administrative Service officer to head the Indian mission, Sandhu was part of the team that dealt with the outrage and quietly worked to unravel the sanctions he was handling the toughest elements among the Americans, the Hill, which had called for and slapped crippling sanctions that remained in force for years, with diminishing scope and coverage.

But the crisis was also an opportunity, founding as it did the current and on-going warming of ties marked by President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in 2000 and by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the US later in the year.