Uma Shankar appointed as RBI Executive Director

The Chief General Manager (CGM), who is in charge of the financial inclusion and development department of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken over as executive director (ED) in the central bank, confirmed three sources.

This position has been taken by him after Meena Hemchandra, the executive director in charge of the central bank's supervision department retired, at the end of November, 2017

Another Executive Director Deepali Pant Joshi is set to retire too; and hence, Shankar's appointment has not yet been made public, claimed the sources.

RBI website still lists Hemchandra as ED and Shankar as CGM.

"The portfolios are yet to be allocated officially because it is likely that there could be some shuffling after Pant Joshi retires this month," said one of the sources cited above.

Shankar is most likely to take charge of the supervision department of the central bank. RBI has 11 EDs currently and each of them supervises the 34 departments headed by CGMs at the central bank.

The department of economic and policy research and department of external investments and operations are the two departments that have no CGMs heading it according to the RBI website.

"EDs are selected by a committee involving the governor and deputy governors from among the CGMs. There will be 11 EDs ultimately," said this source quoted above.

Recently, the RBI tweaked some portfolios between deputy governors, giving Viral Acharya the financial stability unit (FSU) and BP Kanungo the RBI subsidiary Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corp of India (DICGCI).

Both these were managed by deputy governor NS Vishwanathan who is also incharge of the crucial supervision function.