New Delhi: The Union government on Monday appointed Shirish Chandra Murmu as a Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India for a tenure of three years.

Murmu’s appointment was approved by the Appointments Committee of the Union Cabinet and would come into effect from October 9. He will replace M. Rajeshwar Rao, whose extended service is set to end on October 8.

Currently, he is serving as Executive Director at the RBI, looking after the Department of Supervision.

As per the law, the RBI should have four Deputy Governors — two from within the bank, one economist, and one from the commercial banking system.

T. Rabi Sankar, Poonam Gupta, and Swaminathan J are the other Deputy Governors.

Rao has completed five years in the office. He first took charge as Deputy Governor in 2020 for a period of three years, and later he was granted two extensions for a year, in 2023 and 2024.

Earlier last month, the government appointed former RBI Governor Dr Urjit Patel as the Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a period of three years.

The appointment came following the abrupt termination of Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian’s services, which ended his term about six months short.

Patel is credited with helping to design India’s inflation-targeting monetary policy framework.

An Indian economist who was born in Kenya, he began working for the IMF more than thirty years ago.

Before relocating to India in 1992 to serve as the IMF’s Deputy Resident Representative in New Delhi, he spent five years working for the organisation, first in Washington, DC.

In 2016, he succeeded Raghuram Rajan as the 24th Governor of the RBI. He served the shortest term as Governor of the RBI since 1992 and was the first to leave for personal reasons in 2018.