On Monday, the national government named Sanjay Malhotra as the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Malhotra, who is currently the Secretary of the Department of Revenue, would succeed Shaktikanta Das at the central bank.
The Department of Personnel and Training announced that Malhotra will be the next RBI Governor for three years, beginning on December 11, 2024.
Sanjay Malhotra, a 1990-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Rajasthan cadre, has an electrical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and a master's degree in public policy from Princeton University.
Throughout his career, Malhotra has held a number of prominent positions, including Chairman and Managing Director of REC Limited (Maharatna corporation) and Secretary in the Department of Financial Services. In December 2022, he became Revenue Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, following Tarun Bajaj.
In April 2023, he was given the additional title of Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
There was conjecture that Shaktikanta Das' stint as RBI Governor, which ends on December 10, would not be extended for another term. A month before Das' term was set to expire in 2021, the government announced a three-year extension.
During his six-year time as RBI Governor, Shaktikanta Das faced a number of hurdles, including COVID-19 and hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East. However, the RBI's failure to decrease key interest rates citing inflation drew criticism from both the industry and the government, despite mounting requests to address the 5.4% slowdown in GDP growth in the September quarter.
For the 11th consecutive meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the RBI held the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 percent. Das, in introducing the bi-monthly policy, made it plain that the RBI has been working in accordance with the freedom provided by the statutes to the central bank, and that its goal is to keep the inflation horse on a tight leash.
