Scientific Committee 2026

Rajat Bansal

Rajat Bansal is a distinguished international tax and transfer pricing professional with an exceptional career spanning 37 years in the Indian Revenue Service, from which he retired in January 2024. He most recently served as Principal Chief Commissioner of International Taxation, a role in which he was the all-India head for APAs, transfer pricing, and international taxation, and earlier served as India’s Competent Authority as Joint Secretary, Foreign Tax & Tax Research, CBDT. Over the course of his career, he has held several senior and strategically important positions that placed him at the centre of India’s international tax administration, treaty policy, dispute resolution, and transfer pricing architecture.

His expertise extends across advance pricing agreements, mutual agreement procedures, treaty negotiations, BEPS implementation, dispute prevention, and the taxation of the digital economy. He played a vital role in negotiating several MAP and APA cases for large multinational enterprises operating in India, and under his stewardship, the India-Japan MAP relationship received the OECD Award in 2019 for the highest resolution in transfer pricing cases. He also led tax treaty negotiations for India with several jurisdictions, including Mauritius, Singapore, Chile, Brazil, China, Qatar, Oman, and New Zealand, contributing significantly to India’s international tax engagement and policy framework.

Mr. Bansal has also been closely associated with multilateral tax policy development through his work with the United Nations. He served as a member of India’s first GAAR Approving Panel and was a member of the UN Tax Committee from 2017 to 2021, where he played a key role in matters relating to the taxation of the digital economy, dispute resolution, the updation of the UN Model Convention, and the UN Transfer Pricing Guidelines. He is regarded as one of the architects of Article 12B in the UN Model Tax Convention 2021 update and also headed the working group responsible for drafting the India Chapters of the UN Practical Transfer Pricing Manual in both 2017 and 2021. In addition, he served as the single point of contact for India for BEPS Multilateral Instrument matters, co-chaired India’s Internal Committee on BEPS from 2014 to 2016, and served as India’s single point of contact for the Global Forum on exchange of information and transparency, as well as the Forum on Harmful Tax Practices.

He is currently a Resource Person with the United Nations Capacity Development Programme, Visiting Faculty at the Vienna University, a Resource Person with the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in the Netherlands, and a Senior Advisor with KPMG.

Bijal Ajinkya

Bijal Ajinkya is a senior partner in the Direct Tax, Private Client and Investment Funds practice groups at Khaitan & Co. With over 26 years of experience, she advises on international tax, inbound and outbound investment structuring, flip and SPAC transactions, M&A tax negotiations, and complex issues involving GAAR, POEM, PE, MFN, tax insurance and WNI insurance. She also has deep expertise in tax litigation, including leading landmark cases in India, serving as an expert witness in an international arbitration, and recently concluding a first-of-its-kind tax information exchange case involving the Channel Islands. In her private client practice, Bijal advises individuals and family businesses on succession planning, asset protection, and cross-border inheritance issues, while also counselling family-owned businesses on wealth, leadership, and management transitions. She has been instrumental in developing tax structures for investment funds and managers, including fund formation, carried interest structuring, and representation before tax authorities and the Bombay High Court on MAT matters for FIIs.

Christina Dimitropoulou

Christina Dimitropoulou is an Assistant Professor in International Tax at the department of tax law of the law faculty of Maastricht University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, where she also completed her doctoral studies and wrote a dissertation entitled “Robot Taxation: Normative Tax Policy Analysis, Domestic and International Tax Considerations”. Her Phd dissertation has already been awarded the Honourable Mention of the 2023 IFA Mitchell B. Carroll Prize and various others prices. She has been teaching international and European tax law and doing research on and published extensively in the area of digital taxation, international tax law and policy, international tax governance and fundamental rights, as well as on the digital transformation of tax administrations. She has also advised international organisations and foreign governments on the taxation of AI.

Dr. Ashrita Prasad Kotha

Dr. Ashrita Prasad Kotha is an Associate Professor (Law) at the National Law School of India University, specialising in domestic and international tax law. She holds a doctorate degree from Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) and a postgraduate degree in law (BCL) from the University of Oxford. She has received research excellence awards from Jindal Global Law School and WU. She has also been awarded scholarships for research stays at the University of New South Wales (Abe Greenbaum Research Fellowship) and the Max Planck Institute of Tax Law and Public Finance. Her co-authored report on Cesses and Surcharges was submitted to the Fifteenth Finance Commission of India.

Gouri Puri

Gouri Puri is a Partner in the tax practice of Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. Gouri works closely on international tax planning and digital taxation matters. She has over 12 years of experience advising prominent multinationals on cross-border tax issues, including the tax aspects of India-focused mergers and acquisitions, structuring foreign investments, establishing funds and private capital arrangements, and conducting business operations in the Indian market. Gouri has represented clients such as Walmart, Ctrip, Meta, Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited, Bata, Kagome, American Express, and American Insurance Group. She is actively involved in various thought leadership initiatives and policy advocacy through her collaboration with industry chambers, business, and legal media. She regularly contributes articles to leading business journals and publications, including Mondaq, Indian Business Law Journal, Legal 500, Thomson Reuters, Economic Times, Financial Express, Mint, Financial Times, and Indian Express.

Kush Vatsaraj

Kush Vatsaraj is a partner at Vatsaraj & Co., and a 4th-generation member of the audit and tax firm founded in 1934. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2014 and has over 10 years of professional experience. He has previously worked at M/s T P Ostwal & Associates LLP. He specialises in providing advisory & consultancy on international taxation, inbound & outbound investments, cross-border & domestic structuring and restructuring transactions, Indian foreign exchange control laws, and business valuations. He also advises Indian HNIs and business families on family trusts & estate planning. He serves as the Secretary of the International Fiscal Association – India Branch’s Western Region Chapter, and is also India’s Representative at IFA’s APAC Committee. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Foundation for International Taxation. He writes extensively on a wide range of topics and has authored/ co-authored several research papers and articles for Indian & international professional journals, news publications, and business magazines.

Sudarshan Rangan

Sudarshan Rangan is currently UNDP’s public finance specialist for the Asia-Pacific region under the Sustainable Finance Hub. The initiative aims to align public finance policies, including tax, debt, and expenditure, with the SDGs and to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation to achieve them. As part of his role in the UNDP, he also manages the Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) programme in the region. TIWB is a joint UNDP-OECD initiative that provides capacity development on transfer pricing, international tax, criminal tax investigations, and other frontier issues in taxation. On the professional front, he is a qualified legal attorney, a commercial mediator and a chartered accountant from India. He has a master’s in international Tax Law from the Vienna University of Economics & Business (WU) as a FIT Scholar. Before his foray into the development sector, he was a legal attorney focusing on international economic laws. His major focus areas are on International Economic Laws, viz., International Tax, Trade & Investments Laws. He has appeared for the state on taxation matters as well as on investment arbitration disputes. Further, he has also contributed technically to trade negotiations towards free trade agreements and also as an expert witness. He is a regular visiting faculty on international economic laws for corporations and academic institutions.