Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra Appointed as the New RBI Governor
Sanjay Malhotra who is a current Revenue Secretary has been appointed as the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor. According to a statement from the administration, he will take over the office on Wednesday and serve for the next three years.Malhotra is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Rajasthan cadre enrolled in the 1990 batch.
Background Details:
He will be replacing Shaktikanta Das in the central bank whose tenure is coming to an end. He will serve as the 26th governor of the central bank. Malhotra was named revenue secretary following Tarun Bajaj’s retirement in October 2022. He served as Secretary in the Department of Financial Services prior to being named Revenue Secretary. According to information on the Department of Revenue website, he has an extensive amount of knowledge in both state and federal finance and taxation.
He received a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University in the United States and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Over the course of his more than 33 years of career, Malhotra has held positions in a variety of industries including mines, information technology, power, banking and taxation.
Shaktikanta Das had faced many challenges during his six years as RBI Governor such as COVID-19 and the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. But when requests to address the slowdown in GDP growth in the September quarter at 5.4% grew, the RBI’s refusal to lower key rates on the grounds of inflation drew criticism from both the government and industry.
The RBI maintained the repo rate at 6.5% for the eleventh consecutive meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). Das clarified that the RBI has been operating in accordance with the freedom granted to the central bank by the statutes while announcing the bi-monthly policy and that its goal is to keep the inflation horse on a tight leash.
