Governors of the Reserve Bank of India – RBI Governors List

RBI is the short name of the Reserve Bank of India which is India’s central bank.

The RBI Governor is the Chief Executive Officer of the Reserve Bank of India and also the ex-officio chairperson of its Central Board of Directors.

RBI issues the Indian Rupee currency notes and the notes have the signature of the current RBI Governor. e.g. If the note has been issued in 2018, then notes would contain the signature of the Governor of that time.

RBI Governor's Sign on the Note
Image Source: The Quint

 

Generally, the term of office typically runs for three years, but in some cases, can be extended for 2 years.

Here, in this blog post, I will be listing out all the Governors of the Reserve Bank of India till date along with their Term Start and Term End dates.

So, here we go…

List of All the RBI Governors

Sl No. Governor Name Term Start Term End Days in Office
1 Osborne Smith 1-April-1935 30-June-1937 821 days
2 James Braid Taylor 1-July-1937 17-February-1943 2057 days
3 C. D. Deshmukh 11-August-1943 30-May-1949 2150 days
4 Benegal Rama Rau 1-July-1949 14-January-1957 2754 days
5 K. G. Ambegaonkar 14-January-1957 28-February-1957 45 days
6 H. V. R. Iyengar 1-March-1957 28-February-1962 1825 days
7 P. C. Bhattacharya 1-March-1962 30-June-1967 1947 days
8 Lakshmi Kant Jha 1-July-1967 3-May-1970 1037 days
9 B. N. Adarkar 4-May-1970 15-June-1970 42 days
10 Sarukkai Jagannathan 16-June-1970 19-May-1975 1798 days
11 N. C. Sen Gupta 19-May-1975 19-August-1975 92 days
12 K. R. Puri 20-August-1975 2-May-1977 621 days
13 M. Narasimham 3-May-1977 30-November-1977 211 days
14 I. G. Patel 1-December-1977 15-September-1982 1749 days
15 Manmohan Singh 16-September-1982 14-January-1985 851 days
16 Amitav Ghosh 15-January-1985 4-February-1985 20 days
17 R. N. Malhotra 4-February-1985 22-December-1990 2147 days
18 S. Venkitaramanan 22-December-1990 21-December-1992 730 days
19 C. Rangarajan 22-December-1992 21-November-1997 1795 days
20 Bimal Jalan 22-November-1997 6-September-2003 2114 days
21 Y. Venugopal Reddy 6-September-2003 5-September-2008 1826 days
22 D. Subbarao 5-September-2008 4-September-2013 1825 days
23 Raghuram Rajan 4-September-2013 4-September-2016 1096 days
24 Urjit Patel 4-September-2016 11-December-2018 828 days
25 Shaktikanta Das 12-December-2018 Current

Conclusion

The very first officeholder of the Reserve Bank of India was the British banker named Osborne Smith. And, C. D. Deshmukh was the very first Indian Governor of the RBI.

Benegal Rama Rau is the longest-serving Governor for 2754 days term (over 7 years) and Amitav Ghosh is the shortest-serving for 20 days term.

That’s it.

If you have any related query, feel free to let me know in the comments right now.

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