Senior diplomat Ruchi Ghanashyam has been appointed as India's next high commissioner to the United Kingdom, the external affairs ministry said today.

  

She succeeds Y K Sinha who had assumed the charge as the Indian high commissioner in the UK in December, 2016.

Ghanashyam, a 1982-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, is currently Secretary at the headquarters here and is expected to take up the assignment shortly, the ministry said.

Her appointment comes at a crucial time when the UK is in the process of coming out of the European Union.