Jugal Kishore Mohapatra is a post graduate in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics (1977). He also has a Master’s degree in Economics from Boston university, USA (1992).

He joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in1979 and was allotted to the Odisha cadre. He held many senior level positions in the State Govt. including the post of Secretary (Rural Development), Secretary (Revenue), Secretary (Public Enterprises), Secretary to the Chief Minister, Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary (Finance). He was also the Chief Secretary to Odisha Government in (2013-14). In the Central Govt. he served as a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development during 2004-09. Subsequently, during 2014-16 he was Secretary to Govt. of India in the Dept. Of Fertilisers and Rural Development.

Post-retirement, he completed his doctoral research on the impact of privatisation on the performance of the divested state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the XIM University, Bhubaneswar.

Currently, he is the non-executive Chairman of M/s. Shriram Finance Limited (a listed Nifty50 Company) and the India International Bullion Exchange in the GIFT City, Gandhi Nagar.