Incoming Sebi chief sent back to cadre state for promotion

The capital markets regulator Sebi's Chairman-designate Ajay Tyagi was today sent back to his cadre state, Himachal Pradesh, from his current posting in Finance Ministry, to help him avail benefit of promotion.
The competent authority has approved repatriation of Tyagi, a 1984 batch IAS officer, to his cadre to help him avail his promotion, a two-line order issued by the Personnel Ministry said.
The order has come barely a week before Tyagi is slated to take over as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) from incumbent U K Sinha, whose extended tenure ends on March 1.

A senior government functionary said the order is peculiar as Tyagi is unlikely to get the scale of Chief Secretary in his cadre state. Vidya Chander Parkha, a 1983 batch IAS officer, is at present Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh and has a tenure till October 2019.
Tyagi's appointment order as next Sebi chief, issued on February 10, for a period of five years was followed by another directive a week later in which the government curtailed his tenure as chief of the capital market regulator by two years.
58-year-old Tyagi, who has been serving as Additional Secretary (Investment) in the Department of Economic Affairs, will now join as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chairman for an initial period of three years, official sources said.

Besides regulating stock exchanges, Sebi also supervises various kinds of market entities including brokers, mutual funds, FIIs, rating agencies and investment bankers, as also thousands of listed companies.

Tyagi, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, is a Post Graduate in Economics. He was Joint Secretary in Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change before joining Finance Ministry on November 1, 2014 as Additional Secretary.
For a short while, he was also on the board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
In the run-up to the appointment for the head of the capital market regulatory body, many senior bureaucrats including Power Secretary P K Pujari were in contention.

Incumbent Sinha, a 1976 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, had assumed office as Sebi chairman on February 18, 2011, when the previous UPA government was in power.
He was later given a two-year extension. Days before the end of his tenure in February last year, he was given yet another extension till March 1, 2017.
Sinha's over six-year tenure as the Sebi chief is the second-longest after D R Mehta's seven-year term from 1995 to 2002.