When ex-RBI governors get political, it impacts autonomy cause: FM Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday that when former RBI governors join political battles, they hurt the cause of central bank autonomy.

“When former governors join the political fight, the whole cause propagated for autonomy for institutions itself gets hurt. Even during their tenure, they made statements which did not concern their role as RBI governor. Now, it is far easier to see those statements for what they were—political interventions. Therefore, if this kind of trend continues, it will become difficult for future governments to trust governors appointed by the earlier party. RBI governors are not changed when regimes change. After all, we also allowed Dr Rajan a full term. He is a very brilliant man but after getting into the political thicket, if you make statements, then I will take it as more political than economic, ” Jaitley said in an exclusive interview to TOI while responding to a question on the former RBI governor raising doubts about GDP data.

Rejecting the criticism around jobs as a “fake campaign”, he said the data is prepared by the CSO and various organisations and vetted at various stages and the FM maintains an arms-length distance from the whole exercise. “Some left-of-centre academics who had signed multiple memoranda against the government signed one more and therefore the data becomes suspect?” Jaitley said.