 "RBI board to sport a new look")
The government is set to reconstitute the central board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), with the majority of members’ terms coming to an end.
In September 2011, the government had appointed seven directors to the 17-member board. Their four-year expires next month. A meeting here, later this month, could be the final such interaction for those retiring. The meeting would finalise RBI accounts for the year 2014-15 (July-June) and declare the surplus to be transferred to the government.
RBI has already written to the government on the concluding terms of most non-official directors. All the official directors (governor and four deputy governors) and non-official directors are formally appointed by the government. Three members had stepped down from the present board in the recent past for various reasons.
This is the first time the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government, which came to power in May 2014, will be appointing board members of RBI. These members are not involved in monetary policy decisions but provide a boarder vision to the central bank.
Apart from the governor and deputy governors, the idea is to have eminent personalities from various sectors on the board. The government also has two nominees, typically the economic affairs secretary and financial services secretary.
Recently, the government said Ajay Tyagi, additional secretary in the finance ministry, would replace economic affairs secretary Rajiv Mehrishi during board meetings whenever the latter was not available.
The government will also have to decide on an extension to Urjit Patel, one of the deputy governors, whose three-year term ends in January 2016. The tenure of H R Khan, another deputy governor, ends in July 2016. Governor Raghuram Rajan will complete his three-year term in September 2016.
On the board are Y C Deveshwar, chairman of ITC; G M Rao, founder-head of the GMR Group; Kiran Karnik, former president of Nasscom, the software sector's apex association; Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association and nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar, among others.
Kakodkar was in the news recently after he resigned as chairman of the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai over differences with the government on selection of directors in some of the IITs. Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group had been on the board and stepped down in 2013, during the new bank licence process, as his group was an applicant (it didn’t get one). Rajeev Gowda, professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru had resigned from the board after he got elected to the Rajya Sabha last year. The current lieutenant governor of Delhi, Najeeb Jung, had also stepped down from the board.
In September 2011, the government had appointed seven directors to the 17-member board. Their four-year expires next month. A meeting here, later this month, could be the final such interaction for those retiring. The meeting would finalise RBI accounts for the year 2014-15 (July-June) and declare the surplus to be transferred to the government.
| PRESENT COMPOSITION |
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RBI has already written to the government on the concluding terms of most non-official directors. All the official directors (governor and four deputy governors) and non-official directors are formally appointed by the government. Three members had stepped down from the present board in the recent past for various reasons.
This is the first time the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government, which came to power in May 2014, will be appointing board members of RBI. These members are not involved in monetary policy decisions but provide a boarder vision to the central bank.
Apart from the governor and deputy governors, the idea is to have eminent personalities from various sectors on the board. The government also has two nominees, typically the economic affairs secretary and financial services secretary.
Recently, the government said Ajay Tyagi, additional secretary in the finance ministry, would replace economic affairs secretary Rajiv Mehrishi during board meetings whenever the latter was not available.
The government will also have to decide on an extension to Urjit Patel, one of the deputy governors, whose three-year term ends in January 2016. The tenure of H R Khan, another deputy governor, ends in July 2016. Governor Raghuram Rajan will complete his three-year term in September 2016.
On the board are Y C Deveshwar, chairman of ITC; G M Rao, founder-head of the GMR Group; Kiran Karnik, former president of Nasscom, the software sector's apex association; Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association and nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar, among others.
Kakodkar was in the news recently after he resigned as chairman of the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai over differences with the government on selection of directors in some of the IITs. Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group had been on the board and stepped down in 2013, during the new bank licence process, as his group was an applicant (it didn’t get one). Rajeev Gowda, professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru had resigned from the board after he got elected to the Rajya Sabha last year. The current lieutenant governor of Delhi, Najeeb Jung, had also stepped down from the board.