NewDelhi: Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday assumed charge as the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India after Urjit Patel’s sudden resignation from the post.
Das is the 25th Governor of the 83-year-old institution, and will be at the RBI helm for three years. After assuming charge, Das thanked everyone via tweet and sought their good wishes.
“The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Shaktikanta Das, former Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a period of three years,” an official order said yesterday.
Das, a 1980-batch IAS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre, retired as Economic Affairs Secretary in May 2017 and was since appointed India’s Sherpa to the G-20 and a member of the Finance Commission.
Having worked equally at ease under three different finance ministers — P Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee and Arun Jaitley — he is described as a person who prefers to take a non-confrontational approach to problem solving.
Das, who was the economic affairs secretary from 2015 to 2017, worked closely with the central bank and oversaw the demonetisation exercise in late 2016.
Having worked on five consecutive budgets under Chidambaram and Mukherjee between 2008 and 2013, Das was brought back into the Finance Ministry when the BJP government swept to power in mid-2014. He initially headed the revenue department but was later moved to the economic affairs department, which oversaw the demonetisation exercise.
A post-graduate in history from the Delhi University, he has become the first bureaucrat in Mint Street in five years.
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