RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya resigns six months before term ends: Report

RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya, who was in charge of the monetary policy department, has resigned on Monday six months before the scheduled end of his term, as per reports. This is the second high profile resignation in the past six month at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

In December, governor Urjit Patel resigned nearly nine months before the end of his schedule term over differences with the government. Acharya had joined the central bank on January 23 last year after Patel was elevated to the post of governor in September 2016. The RBI is now left with three deputy governors N S Vishwanathan, B P Kanungo and M K Jain.

Acharya, a New York University economics professor who once called himself the 'poor man's Raghuram Rajan', was appointed on January 23, 2017, and was RBI's youngest deputy governor post economic liberalisation. He took over at a time when the central bank was facing criticism for repeated changes in the rules related to deposit and withdrawal of money, post-demonetisation. Acharya will be returning to New York University Stern School of Business (NYU Stern) in August as CV Starr Professor of Economics.

Viral Acharya is in charge of the Financial Stability Unit, Monetary Policy Department, Department of Economic and Policy Research, Financial Markets Operation Department, Financial Market Regulation Department, among others at the RBI. Apart from being an economist and also the Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Acharya also serves as a member of the advisory council of the RBI Academy and is a member of the Academic Council of the National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) since 2014.

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In the 1991 IIT entrance exam, Viral Acharya was ranked 5th nationally. Acharya is an IIT graduate and holds a BTech degree in Computer Science. He had received the President of India Gold Medal for attaining the highest grade point average in his batch. Viral Acharya also worked at the London Business School (LBS) from 2001 to 2008.

He is the recipient of the Alexandre Lamfalussy Senior Research Fellowship of the Bank for International Settlements for 2017 and the inaugural Banque de France and Toulouse School of Economics Junior Prize in Monetary Economics and Finance in 2011. Viral Acharya was appointed by the Central Government of India as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India for a period of three years.

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(With PTI inputs)