With less than six weeks to go before Finance Secretary S Nara- yan retires, two IAS officers of the 1965 batch, Dipak Chatterjee and B K Chaturvedi, have emerged as the frontrunners for the post.
However, officials close to the developments said Finance Minister Jaswant Singh might decide to choose a professional from outside. Among the names doing the rounds is Deepak Parekh, chairman of the Housing Development Finance Corporation.
Parekh has been a member of most of the committees on capital markets and related issues constituted by the finance ministry in the past few years. These include the expert committee on capital markets set up after the stock scam of 2001 as well as the three-member Malegam committee on restructuring Unit Trust of India.
Chatterjee is now the commerce secretary, and Chaturvedi petroleum secretary. What may tilt the scales in favour of Parekh is the finance minister
