On January 21, 2020, For the 1st time, India central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released the minutes of the 579th meeting of Central Board of Directors (BoD) held in Chandigarh on October 11, 2019 as part of the central bank’s transparency initiative.
Key Points:
i.The disclosure of the information is considered as a measure to further enhance public awareness about the functioning of the RBI & and bring accountability to the directors.
ii.The minutes of the meetings of the Central Board will be uploaded on the RBI’s website under provisions of Section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act,2005, which needs suo motu (on its own) disclosure of information by each public authority.
iii.Till now, RBI shared only the minutes of board meetings in response to queries under the RTI Act. Hereafter, the minutes will be uploaded on the RBI website within 2- weeks from the date of its confirmation in the upcoming meeting of the Central Board and on being signed by the chairman in the same meeting.
iv.As per the minutes unveiled by RBI, in Chandigarh the Central Board discussed the present status of the financial sector as well supervision of both banks & non-bank entities. It also discussed the state of the financial sector with special focus on the regulatory and supervisory framework of commercial ,cooperative banks, and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in detail.
It also discussed the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank Ltd (PMC Bank) fraud case at Chandigarh meet.
v.Background:In the recent times, RBI central board meetings have been controversial, especially considering that then governor Urjit Patel had resigned for the reason of alleged difference of opinions on policy matters with the central government.
vi.BOD of RBI: Reserve Bank Governor & 4 Deputy Governors are members of the central board. Other members include Bharat Narotam Doshi, Sudhir Mankad, Ashok Gulati, Manish Sabharwal, Prasanna Kumar Mohanty, Satish Kashinath Marathe, Dilip S Shanghvi, Swaminathan Gurumurthy, Revathy Iyer, Atanu Chakraborty, Sachin Chaturvedi, Rajiv Kumar and Natarajan Chandrasekaran.
About Reserve Bank of India (RBI):
Headquarters– Mumbai, Maharashtra
Formation– 1 April 1935
Governor– Shaktikanta Das
Deputy Governors– 4 (BP Kanungo, N S Vishwanathan, Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra)
