Head of currency printing company Anurag Agarwal shown the door

KOLKATA: The government has removed Anurag Agarwal as chairman and managing director of Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India barely three months after he took charge of the company engaged in producing bank notes, coins and other government-related documents.

S Selvakumar, joint secretary at department of economic affairs, has been told to head the state-run corporation as additional charge. The change came into effect from Tuesday, according to an office order from Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL).

ET reviewed a copy of the order. Agarwal had taken a contentious decision to halt production of coins last week. This was unceremoniously revoked within a couple of days after workers sought finance minister Arun Jaitley's intervention in the matter.


The flow of event has raised speculation that the decision to remove Agarwal may be because of the decision to stop minting coins. But this could not be verified independently. An IIT Kanpur alumnus, Agarwal became a joint secretary at the department of economic affairs in September last year and was entrusted with the additional charge of CMD of SPMCIL on October 5. He had joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1990, a year before liberalisation of Indian economy.

Selvakumar, a 1997 batch Karnataka cadre IAS officer was appointed as Joint Secretary in DEA in 2015. Earlier, he was director in the Prime Minister’s Office and Managing Director of Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation.