The Union government has appointed the current Revenue Secretary, Sanjay Malhotra as the next Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Malhotra will serve a three-year term and take over from Shaktikanta Das, who has led India’s central bank for the past six years. This appointment comes at a challenging time for the central bank, with growing pressure to reduce interest rates as economic growth slowed to a seven-quarter low of 5.4 per cent in the July-September period.
Under Shaktikanta Das, the RBI had kept interest rates steady for nearly two years, citing concerns over inflation risks.
A 1990-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Rajasthan cadre, Sanjay Malhotra has over the course of his career worked across various sectors, including power, finance, taxation, information technology, and mining. He is a graduate in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, besides holding a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Princeton University.
Malhotra has previously served as the Chairman and Managing Director of the state-owned Rural Electrification Corporation Limited. Prior to his current role as Revenue Secretary, he was Secretary of the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry of Finance.
With extensive experience in finance and taxation at both the state and central government levels, Malhotra has been instrumental in shaping policies related to both direct and indirect taxes.
