New Delhi, Feb 28 (PTI) Tuhin Kanta Pandey, the government's divestment man who played a key role in sale of Air India as well as listing of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), has been appointed as head of SEBI, marking return of bureaucrat at the helm of India's capital market regulator.

Pandey, the top bureaucrat in the Finance Ministry, will replace Madhabi Puri Buch, whose term ends Friday as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

Buch, 60, who was the first woman and the only person from the private sector to head SEBI, had a tumultuous three-year term marked with allegations of conflict of interest as well as sweeping overhaul of regulations.

Prior to her, the position was mostly held by bureaucrats.

A career bureaucrat, Pandey, 59, is currently the finance secretary and is known to be stickler for rules and a clean image. He will have a three-year term.

He is the second bureaucrat from the finance ministry to have been appointed to key roles in the financial sector since December. His colleague in charge of the revenue department Sanjay Malhotra was in December appointed as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

A 1987-batch Odisha-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Pandey has been the longest serving divestment secretary, serving for over five years. The role of finance secretary was added to his portfolio in September last year by virtue of him being the senior most among the secretaries in the finance ministry.

As the Secretary in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, he oversaw the sale of loss-making national carrier Air India to the Tata Group in October 2021 as well as listing of India's biggest insurance company LIC in May 2022.

Although, Buch in her three-year tenure made significant strides in areas like faster settlements in equities, enhanced FPI disclosures and increasing mutual fund penetration through Rs 250 SIP, the last year of her tenure was marked by heightened controversy, when she battled a series of allegations by Hindenburg Research and the Congress party, while simultaneously dealing with in-house employee protests against alleged "toxic work culture".

Against this backdrop, the government opted for a seasoned bureaucrat Pandey, who had extensive experience in handling government's disinvestment and privatisation programmes, to head the regulatory body.

Soft spoken Pandey is known for sticking to the rule book and getting the work done.

It was under his tenure as DIPAM secretary, that Air India was privatised after many unsuccessful attempts in the past.

Pandey will take over as the head of the SEBI at a time when markets are witnessing bear pressure following a streak of capital withdrawal by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have withdrawn more than Rs 1 lakh crore since January.

Pandey was the longest-serving secretary in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), a department in the finance ministry that manages government equity in public sector companies, as well as the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE).

He assumed the charge of the revenue department on January 9, after his predecessor Sanjay Malhotra moved to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as its governor. Pandey played a key role in the framing of the 2025-26 Budget, which gave tax reliefs totalling Rs 1 lakh crore to the middle class. He was also involved in the drafting of the new Income Tax Bill, which seeks to replace the 64-year-old Income Tax Act, 1961.

In his over-five-year stint (October 24, 2019 to January 8, 2025) at the DIPAM, Pandey took forward disinvestments of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) as he implemented the public sector enterprises (PSE) policy, which intended to minimise the presence of the government in the PSEs across all sectors of the economy.

Besides Rs 18,000-crore privatisation of Air India, Pandey also oversaw the privatisation plans of the IDBI Bank. The bidders are currently undergoing the due-diligence process.

Pandey holds an MA in economics from the Panjab University, Chandigarh and an MBA from the University of Birmingham (UK). He has worked in various capacities in the government of Odisha and the Union government.

In the early part of his career, Pandey served as the administrative head in the departments of health, general administration, commercial taxes, transport and finance. He also served as the executive director of the Odisha State Finance Corporation and managing director of the Odisha Small Industries Corporation.

At the Centre, his previous positions include Joint Secretary, Planning Commission (now NITI Aayog), Joint Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce. PTI JD DP NKD ANZ HVA