Vishwanathan appointed RBI Deputy Governor

New Delhi, Jun 28 () N S Vishwanathan was today appointed Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, replacing H R Khan who will retire next week. Vishwanathan, currently Executive Director at the central bank, was chosen by a search committee headed by Cabinet Secretary. This is the first appointment done through this high-level panel. "The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved the appointment of N S Vishwanathan Executive Director, RBI as Deputy Governor RBI vice H R Khan for a period of 3 years," a government notification said. He will replace Khan, who will superannuate on July 3 onturning 62.All appointments of Deputy Governors to RBI werepreviously done by a panel headed by RBI Governor. But for thefirst time, a Deputy Governor's appointment has been madethrough recommendations of the Financial Sector RegulatoryAppointment Search Committee headed by Cabinet Secretary P KSinha. This panel included RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.Rajan, who incidentally himself has said no to a secondterm after his current three-year tenure ends on September 4,had headed a search panel for appointment of Deputy Governorsas early as this January that gave 3-year extension to UrjitPatel.Government is currently in process of selecting Rajan'ssuccessor and officials have said that the name could beannounced by next month.Khan, who is in-charge of the financial markets, internaldebt management departments, foreign management among othersat the central bank, was appointed as a Deputy Governor inJuly 2011 and was re-appointed in 2014 for two more years.The central bank has four deputy governors - two from within the ranks (the other being R Gandhi), one commercial banker (S S Mundra) and an economist Urjit Patel who heads the monetary policy department. Before becoming Executive Director in April 2014,Vishwanathan was Principal Chief General Manager in theDepartment of non-banking supervision at the Reserve Bank.He has also served as Chief General Manager of Vigilance at IFCI Ltd, a Delhi-based government-owned finance company. Executive directors, 11 in all, are the third rung in theRBI hierarchy. DP ANZBJ