Manoj Kumar Dwivedi took over as chairman of the Tobacco Board following dismissal last week of Koothati Gopal, The Hindu reported.

Dwivedi left his post as joint secretary in the Ministry of Small and Medium Businesses to take the helm of an agency facing the dual task of persuading growers to cut back production and move roughly 40 million kg of unsold tobacco from last year’s production, the newspaper said on its website. An earlier report in the Times of India named Santosh Sarangi, a Commerce Ministry joint secretary, as Gopal’s replacement.