The Union government on Monday appointed Sanjay Malhotra, a 1990-batch Indian Administrative Service officer from the Rajasthan cadre, as the next governor of the Reserve Bank of India for a three-year term.
Malhotra, currently serving as the revenue secretary in the Ministry of Finance, will replace Shaktikanta Das, whose tenure will end on Tuesday.
Das had taken over as the central bank’s governor after Urjit Patel resigned in December 2018 before the end of his term, citing personal reasons.
Malhotra will become the 26th governor of the Reserve Bank on Wednesday. He is an engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and has a Master’s in Public Policy from Princeton University in the United States.
Previously, he held the post of secretary in the Department of Financial Services under the Ministry of Finance.
His appointment comes at a time when the Reserve Bank of India is looking to reign in retail inflation, which jumped to a 14-month high of 6.2% in October.
The central bank is tasked with keeping inflation at 4%, with a tolerance band between 2% and 6%. In October, the inflation rate crossed the tolerance cap of 6% for the first time since August 2023.
In its monetary policy meeting on Friday, the central bank also lowered the country’s gross domestic product estimates for the financial year 2024-’25 from 7.2% to 6.6%.