Govt cuts SEBI chairman-designate Ajay Tyagi’s tenure

New Delhi, February 17

The government on Friday curtailed tenure of Ajay Tyagi as next chief of capital market regulator SEBI by two years, barely a week after his name was cleared to succeed incumbent U.K. Sinha with a five-year term.

Tyagi will now join as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman for an initial period of three years, official sources said on Friday, without citing reasons behind the curtailment of his term.

58-year-old Tyagi, a 1984 batch IAS officer of Himachal Pradesh cadre presently posted as Additional Secretary (Investment) in the Department of Economic Affairs, will take over as SEBI chief after the extended tenure of Sinha ends on March 1.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had on February 10 approved Tyagi’s appointment for a period not exceeding five years or till the age of 65 years, as per an order issued earlier by the Personnel Ministry.

SEBI, besides regulating stock exchanges, also supervises various kinds of market entities, including brokers, mutual funds, FIIs, rating agencies and investment bankers, as also thousands of listed companies.

Tyagi, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, is a post-graduate in Economics. He was Joint Secretary in Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change before joining Finance Ministry on November 1, 2014 as Additional Secretary.

For a short while, he was also on the board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

In the run-up to the appointment for the head of the capital market regulatory body, many senior bureaucrats including Power Secretary P.K. Pujari were in contention.

Incumbent Sinha, a 1976 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, had assumed office as SEBI chairman on February 18, 2011, when the previous UPA government was in power.

He was later given a two-year extension. Days before the end of his tenure in February last year, he was given yet another extension till March 1, 2017.

Sinha’s over six-year tenure as the SEBI chief is the second-longest after D.R. Mehta’s seven-year term from 1995 to 2002. — PTI