Government Beefs Up RBI Central Board With Three Appointments
Three new members for the central board along with three appointments for the local board have been cleared.
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The government on Thursday appointed three independent directors to the board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) while also announcing appointments to three local boards of the central bank.
Economists Ashok Gulati and Rajiv Kumar, along with Manish Sabharwal, co-founder of Teamlease have been appointed to the central board of the RBI, said a notification from the government.
Ashok Gulati is an agricultural economists and the former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which advises the government on policies related to food pricing such as setting on minimum support prices. Rajiv Kumar is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Manish Sabharwal of Teamlease is a well known expert in the area of employment and has also been part of the government’s Skill India programme.
Each has been appointed for a period of four years.
The three will add to the bench strength of independent directors on the RBI board. Currently the central board has eleven members, of which four are independent directors.
Bharat Doshi, director on the board of Mahindra & Mahindra, N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, Sudhir Mankad, a civil servant from Gujarat and Nachiket Mor of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are the four independent faces on the board.
All other members on the board belong either to the RBI or the government.
- In addition to the appointments to the central board, the government has also cleared three names for the RBI’s local boards.
- Prasanna Kumar Mohanty has been appointed to the Southern local board
- Vallabh Bhanshali has been appointed to the Western local board
- Sunil Mitra has been appointed to the Eastern local board
According to the RBI Act, the central board can have upto 21 members including official and non-official members. The official members include the RBI governor and the four deputy governors. The non-official directors include two government officials and ten nominated directors.
In addition to this, one representative each from the four local boards of the RBI is nominated to sit on the central board.
Over the past two years, the composition of the central board have been thin. Before today’s appointment, there were three independent directors on the central board and one nominee of a local board (Nachiket Mor).