The Centre has appointed a new Banks Board Bureau (BBB), under the Chairmanship of Bhanu Pratap Sharma, to select top management in public sector banks.

Three new members – Vedika Bandarkar, P Pradeep Kumar and Pradip P Shah – have been appointed to the new BBB, DFS Secretary, Rajeev Kumar, tweeted on Thursday. Prior to this appointment, Bhanu Pratap Sharma was chairman, Recruitment & Assessment Centre, DRDO.

Vedika Bhandarkar is the former vice-chairman & managing director (investment banking & global markets) at Credit Suisse India (2010-2015).

While Pradeep Kumar is a former managing director of State Bank of India (from 2013-15), Pradip P Shah is the founder MD of CRISIL, and was alternate member of BBB (2017-18). Shah is currently on the board of over 10 companies.

It may be recalled that BBB was set up under the chairmanship of former CAG Vinod Rai to improve governance in public sector banks.

BBB had started to function from April 1, 2016, and was set up for a period of two years.

It was initially given the mandate to recommend candidates for the top posts in public sector banks. This role was later expanded to suggest capital raising plans. Meanwhile, the DFS Secretary tweeted that the BBB recommendations made so far include HR reforms, which would be taken forward.

Vinod Rai-led BBB had on March 19 this year made public a compendium of the recommendations it had made to the government in the two years of its existence.

The bureau was ready to address governance issues in PSBs and improve their output, but there was no response from the ministry in giving such a specific mandate to BBB.

With very little intervention coming from the government to sort out PSBs’ governance mess, things turned for the worse in the Indian banking system in recent years, where nearly 70 per cent of the banking intermediation business is still transacted through these banks, banking observers said.

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