The association representing employees and officers of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has written to governor Urjit Patel to uphold the central bank’s autonomy amid allegations that the government is undermining it.
The union cited the example of the incident that a joint secretary of the Finance Ministry was mandated by the government to ‘co-ordinate RBI cash operations’, which it described as ‘most unfortunate’.
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“Our attention has been drawn to a recent news item that Finance Ministry has sent a joint secretary to coordinate RBI cash ops. If true, this is most unfortunate and we take strong exception to this measure of the government as impinging on RBI’s autonomy and its statutory as well as operational jurisdiction,” the United Forum of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees said in a mail to Mr. Patel.
The union said that it assumed the RBI did not ask for the deployment of the joint secretary in its functions; rather that it was the Finance Ministry which had imposed itself on RBI which it said was ‘absolutely unacceptable and deplorable’.