In a shocking announcement, the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said that he would step down after his term ends on September 4. Someone will soon be announced as the successor of Rajan, says Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. A senior official gave seven names as possible candidates to Reuters. Here are those seven.

Urjit Patel

He is one of the RBI’s four deputy governors. Patel ran the central bank’s monetary policy department since 2013. He is also considered a very close lieutenant to Mr Rajan.

Arundhati Bhattacharya

She is a high profile banker. She has been heading India’s largest lender — State Bank of India — since late 2013. Many investors have praised her management of the bank’s mountain of bad debt. She was also named in the Forbes list of world’s 100 most powerful women.

Rakesh Mohan

He has already worked as a deputy governor of the RBI twice. Additionally, he was also the secretary at the department of economic affairs at the Indian government’s finance ministry. He even worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Subir Gokarn

He was also a former deputy RBI governor. At present, he is working as an executive director at the IMF. When he was working at the central bank, he was in charge of the monetary policy.

Ashok Lahari

He was a chief economic adviser to the Indian government. He also has experience serving as the Asian Development Bank as an executive director. He is also the non-executive chairman of Bandhan Bank a new lender of India.

Ashok Chawla

He was appointed as the chair of the National Stock Exchange, India’s biggest bourse. This year, he stepped down as chairman of Competition Commission of India. He even served on the board of the Reserve Bank of India. He has been a director for state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp too.

Vijay Kelkar

He held many positions in the Indian government. He was even a finance secretary. He authored several reports for the government. During the previous government, he even formed a fiscal consolidation roadmap.

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Source: Flickr: Lionel Barber, Raghuram Rajan and Lloyd Blankfein

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