Former Reserve Financial institution of India governor Shaktikanta Das was on Saturday appointed the second Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
P Ok Mishra, a retired IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, is at present serving because the Principal Secretary to the prime minister.
In keeping with an official order, the tenure of Das, a retired IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, can be “co-terminus” with the time period of the prime minister or till additional orders, whichever is earlier.
That is the primary time that two individuals will concurrently function principal secretaries to the prime minister. Each Mishra and Das are from Odisha.
“The Appointments Committee of the Cupboard has accredited the appointment of Shri Shaktikanta Das, IAS (Retired), as Principal Secretary-2 to Prime Minister with impact from the date he assumes the workplace. His appointment can be co-terminus with the time period of the Prime Minister or till additional orders, whichever is earlier,” the order stated.
Sixty-eight-year previous Das has been a profession civil servant with over 44 years of distinguished service, primarily within the areas of finance, taxation, funding and infrastructure.
He was the central authorities’s income secretary. Throughout his tenure as financial affairs secretary in 2016, the Modi authorities had introduced the demonetisation.
Das performed a key position when a number of oblique taxes had been merged into one GST, which got here into impact on July 1, 2017. Publish-retirement, he was appointed as a member of the fifteenth Finance Fee and G20 Sherpa of India.
Das turned the twenty fifth governor of the RBI in 2018 after Urjit Patel resigned.
Initially appointed for 3 years, his tenure was prolonged for an additional interval of three years in 2021. He demitted workplace in December 2024 when Sanjay Malhotra was appointed as RBI governor.
Das was the second longest serving governor of the RBI in its 90-year historical past after Benegal Rama Rau, who had a seven-and-a-half-year tenure within the Nineteen Fifties.
Das, a 1980-batch IAS officer, holds a Grasp’s diploma in historical past from Delhi’s St Stephen’s Faculty and a postgraduate diploma in public administration from the College of Birmingham.
Because the RBI governor, he centered on sustaining monetary stability, curbing inflation and selling financial progress.
He took a number of measures to handle the liquidity crunch within the non-banking monetary sector and took steps to strengthen the regulatory framework for banks and non-banking monetary corporations.
Das is credited with navigating the RBI’s financial insurance policies by way of the Covid pandemic. As a key financial policymaker, he confronted difficult instances in managing the disruptions brought on by the lockdown. He selected to chop the coverage repo fee to a historic low of 4 per cent, persevering with with the low-interest fee regime for nearly two years to assist the economic system hit badly by the lockdown.
Throughout his tenure, the RBI handed over the highest-ever dividend of Rs 2.11 lakh crore to the Centre for 2023-24.
He was additionally conferred with the ‘Central Financial institution Governor of the 12 months’ award by Central Banking, UK.
Das had additionally served as India’s Alternate Governor within the World Financial institution, Asian Growth Financial institution (ADB), New Growth Financial institution (NDB) and Asian Infrastructure Funding Financial institution (AIIB).
He represented India in a number of worldwide fora just like the IMF, G20, BRICS and SAARC.
Mishra, who was Union agriculture secretary, has been serving as Principal Secretary to the prime minister since September 2019. Previous to his present task, he had served as extra principal secretary to PM Modi throughout his first time period.
