Senior bureaucrat Lok Ranjan, who is the Central Government nominee on the board of ICICI Bank, has been transferred to the Personnel Ministry.
His transfer comes a month after he was appointed on ICICI Bank board whose Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chanda Kochhar is facing allegations of conflict of interest in sanctioning of 3,250 crore loan to the Videocon group.
Ranjan, a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre, is at present joint secretary in the Department of Financial Services. He has been appointed as joint secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training, according to an official order issued yesterday, without citing further details.
Ranjan was appointed the government’s nominee of the bank, effective April 5, 2018, according to the ICICI Bank’s website. The bureaucrat had on Monday skipped the bank’s board meeting.
The CBI has registered a preliminary enquiry against Videocon founder Venugopal Dhoot and Deepak Kochhar, Chanda Kochhar’s husband, and a few others. It had questioned a few ICICI Bank officials as part of its enquiry to find out if any quid pro quo was involved in the sanctioning of Rs 3,250 crore loan to the Videocon group in 2012.
The CBI had last month questioned Rajeev Kochhar, Chanda Kochhar’s brother-in-law, in connection with its enquiry.