Former bureaucrat Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday was appointed as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, a government statement said.
Mr. Das, who retired as Economic Affairs Secretary in May 2017, has been appointed for a term of three years.
He replaces Urjit Patel, who resigned on Monday citing personal reasons.
Modi initially brought Das into the Finance Ministry to head up the revenue department, later moving him to economic affairs, where he helped to spearhead the prime minister’s controversial demonetization drive in 2016.
Das came under fire for his pro-demonetisation stance and he was the most visible and vocal bureaucrat at the time Modi withdrew the high-value bank notes in 2016.
Last year, Das criticised the methodology of global rating agencies and sought a sovereign rating upgrade. Das has worked extensively in the budget division under both Modi’s government and the previous coalition led by the Congress.
Shaktikanta’s appointment comes after the sudden resignation of Urjit Patel as the RBI Governor last evening. Although Urjit Patel cited personal reasons for his resignation, the feud between the central bank and the government was long out in the open. There has been speculation of his resignation after deputy governor Viral Acharya’s speech last month that sought to defend the autonomy of the RBI and the subsequent differences between the government and the RBI over various issues related to liquidity, credit flow and the controls governing weak banks.
