Nasscom's executive council is expected to approve the name at its meeting on Friday in Delhi. The organization declined to comment on the matter. Chandrasekhar, an IAS officer who joined the government in 1975, retired as telecom secretary in March this year.

He is an alumnus of IIT, Bombay, and has an MSc degree in computer sciencethe Pennsylvania State University, US. He was in the IT department,he is said to have initiated the national e-governance programme, including the common service centre programme, the state data centre programme; and the state wide area network programme.

There was speculation that he was being considered for the post of Comptroller and Auditor General ( CAG), to succeed Vinod Rai when the latter quit office on May 31. Nasscom had mandated executive search firm Egon Zehnder to find a candidate to succeed Mittal. Ravi Venkatesan, who was chairman of Microsoft India, and Ganesh Natarajan, vice chairman of Zensar Technologies, were among those that were considered for the role, sources said. Chandrasekhar will be Nasscom's fourth president.

The organization's founding president was Dewang Mehta. Kiran Karnik took over in 2001 following Mehta's sudden demise. Som Mittal took overKarnik in 2008. Mittal's term was to end in 2013, but Nasscom extended it to early 2014.

Mittal has had to deal with the sharp slump in the industry's growth rate following the global economic recession of 2008-09, and the subsequent outcry, especially in the US, against outsourcing and the alleged loss of jobs it entails in that country. It has led to a far stricter visa regime in the US, which could get worse if the country's proposed comprehensive immigration bill is passed.

Mittal has been rallying forces to dilute provisions of the bill. For the Indian IT industry, which has 60% of revenues comingthe US, the ability to move people to that country is critical.

Under Mittal, the organization has also been involved in raising the quality of talent in India that is available for the IT industry, and in pushing IT into smaller towns. He also had to deal with dissatisfactionsections of the IT industry, including thosethe BPO segment and the software products segment. These were sought to be addressed by creating new and strong sub-committees within Nasscom.

Chandrasekhar will now have to take some of these initiatives forward. The visa issue and its implications if the new US bill is passed, will perhaps be his biggest challenge in the short term.