Who Is Sanjay Malhotra, The Next RBI Governor Replacing Shaktikanta Das? Key Facts To Know

Senior bureaucrat Sanjay Malhotra was named as the next governor of the Reserve Bank of India on Monday. He would be replacing Shaktikanta Das, the incumbent RBI Governor whose tenure is scheduled to expire on Tuesday.

Malhotra, an Indian Administrative Service officer of 1990-batch from the Rajasthan cadre, is presently serving as the revenue secretary in the Ministry of Finance.

Prior to taking charge as the revenue secretary in November 2022, Malhotra served as the secretary in the department of financial services for about a nine-month tenure starting in February 2022.

Malhotra's career as a bureaucrat stretches to more than three decades. Before assuming the the charge of financial services secretary, he was serving as the chairman and managing director of REC Ltd., the state-run financer of power projects.

"With demonstrated leadership and excellence in his career of over 33 years, Sanjay Malhotra has worked in multifarious sectors including power, finance and taxation, information technology, mines etc.," according to a note on the website of the Department of Revenue.

"He has extensive experience in finance and taxation at the state as well as the central Government. As a part of his present assignment (revenue secretary), he plays an instrumental role in tax policy formulation in respect of direct and indirect taxes," it added.

During Malhotra's tenure as the revenue secretary, the finance ministry has maintained a strong momentum in goods and services tax collection. The monthly collection has risen from Rs 1.49 lakh crore in December 2022 to Rs 1.82 lakh crore in November 2024.

In terms of education, Malhotra is an engineering graduate in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and has a Master's in Public Policy from the Princeton University, USA.

Malhotra's appointment marks an end to the six-year tenure of Shaktikanta Das, who was appointed as RBI Governor in December 2018, after the then-central bank chief, Urjit Patel, resigned. A three-year extension was then announced in December 2021 for Das.