Finance Secretary
The Finance Secretary is the Permanent Secretary-level civil servant, who plays a leadership role in the bureaucracy of the Finance Ministry, Government of India.[1]
Rajiv Mehrishi is current Finance Secretary who replaced Arvind Mayaram. [2]
Overview
The Ministry of Finance is composed of five departmentthe Department of Economic Affairs, the Department of Revenue, the Department of Expenditure, the Department of Financial Services and Department of Disinvestment. Each of the departments is headed by a secretary. Each of the five secretaries directly reports to the finance minister.
The "Finance Secretary" (FS) is a tag given to one of the five secretaries. It only denotes a first among equals. The other four secretaries do not report to the FS; their files do not flow through him.
By default, the FS tends to be the senior most of the five, where seniority is defined by the year of entry into the civil service and not age. Sometimes, none of the five is labelled FS.
Most finance secretaries have been members of the Indian Administrative Service or IAS, but some of them have been career economists. The last finance secretary of India was Mr. Arun Ramanathan, an IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu Cadre. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Duvvuri Subba Rao, Bimal Jalan and Vijay Kelkar are some of the best known finance secretaries.
Edmund James Sinkinson BCS LLD born Kendal, UK, 16 July 1849, was Financial Secretary to the Government of India. He died at Darjeeling 1 Jan 1891 (see memorial window in Kendal Parish Church).