Chakrabarty back with a bang

Gets back most earlier roles, plus new ones, after RBI reallocates portfolios.

Four months after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) took away important departments handled by K C Chakrabarty, one of its deputy governors, the central bank on Wednesday restored most of those and also gave two new portfolios, department of banking supervision and department of currency management.

RBI on Wednesday re-allocated the portfolios of its deputy governors, along with assigning responsibilities to Anand Sinha, who took charge as deputy governor on promotion today.

Chakrabarty got back most of his lost departments — human resources, administration and personnel management, rural planning and credit (which looks after financial inclusion). He got banking supervision and currency management, earlier with Usha Thorat, a deputy governor who retired in November.

After Thorat’s retirement, all her departments had been temporarily given to another deputy governor, Shyamala Gopinath.

In August last year, RBI took away four departments from Chakrabarty, though the reason was not made public.

Sinha has got the department of banking operations and development, urban banks department, information technology, expenditure and budgetary control, inspection, legal and premises departments. Information technology was with Chakrabarty.

This is the first time in many years that the department of banking operations and development and the department of banking supervision are being handled by different deputy governors. Earlier, Thorat and then V Leeladhar looked after both departments.

Mint Road sources said it had been difficult to ignore Chakrabarty’s experience and efficiency when RBI was dealing with several important policy decisions. The rural planning and credit department, for example, which carries the responsibility of financial inclusion, may have more responsibility once micro finance institutions (MFIs) comes under the purview of the central bank. At present, only MFIs registered ad non-banking financial companies are under RBI’s lens, but there is a view that almost all important MFIs should come under the regulator’s purview. There is a proposal to bring MFI regulation under the rural planning and credit department, though NBFCs are regulated by the non-banking supervision department.

Portfolios of some of the executive directors have also been reallocated. RBI is in the process of appointing new EDs by promotion. Till the time, some of the chief general managers will report directly to the respective deputy governors.