Government vs RBI: Meet the 18 board members

The most keenly watched board meeting of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the recent history has finally begun with all the 18 board members present at the meet.

Amongst a range of issues, the most dominating will be on how much capital does the central bank need to hold and how strict should the rules governing lending by banks should be.

The most crucial is RBI governor Urjit Patel, who is a voting member.

Four deputy governors, NS Vishwanathan, Viral Acharya, BP Kanungo and M Kumar Jain do not have the right to vote, however, they play extremely important roles on the board.

There are two ex-officio members- SC Garg, secretary of Department of Economic Affairs and Rajiv Kumar, secretary of Department of Financial Services. The two do not have the right to vote.

While other independent members, all nominated by the government at various points are- N Chandrasekaran, Bharat Doshi, Sudhir Mankand, Ashok Gulati, Manish Sabharwal, Dr Prasanna Mohanty, Dilip Shanghvi, Satish Marathe, S Gurumurthy, Revathy Iyer and Professor Sachin Chaturvedi.