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Journalism of Courage
A day after he resigned as chairman of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA),Yogesh Agarwal said he quit on the advice of the finance ministry.
The finance ministry asked me to step down as they want to bring in someone else. Then how can I stay back where I am not wanted? Agarwal said.
In a sudden and unusual move,Agarwal had quit from his position as the pension regulator on Wednesday,with nearly 20 months of his five-year term ahead of him. He is one of the few regulators who have chosen to step down mid-term.
The finance ministry had,however,said that Agarwal had chosen to quit on his own. He gracefully decided to step down as with the passage of the long-pending PFRDA Bill in Parliament,the PFRDA had become a statutory authority. There were concerns over his appointment, a finance ministry official had said.
The ministry had also promptly replaced him and assigned concurrent charge to Anup Wadhawan,joint secretary in the department of financial services.
Agarwal said that his decision to quit was not related to his exclusion from the selection committee to appoint two whole-time directors of the PFRDA. I never raised the issue with the finance ministry. It is their prerogative if they wish to ask the Irda chairman to help appoint board members, he said.
The finance ministry has maintained that the selection panel was constituted based on guidelines of the Appointments Committee of Cabinet. The norms were very specific. Since it did not mention the PFRDA chairmans name,how could he be included in the panel? said a finance ministry official.
The selection committee included economic affairs secretary Arvind Mayaram,financial services secretary Rajiv Takru,department of personnel and training secretary Syamal Kumar Sarkar, Irda chairman TS Vijayan,and former LIC chairman SB Mathur.
