KV Kamath To Replace Nirmala Sitharaman As Finance Minister?

We all know that banker KV Kamath quit his post as president of National Development Bank (NDB) recently. He completed five years in office. Now this coincided with the news that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on the lookout for an able leader to take on the role of India's finance minister.

Modi's second term has not been very impressive on the economic front. the Opposition has been pointing fingers at the Modi government's failure to save the sagging economy. So Economic revival plan seems to top priorities for the BJP led NDA government.

Meanwhile, buzz in the business circles is that the PM will pick either an economist or a banker to take charge as India's finance minister. Surprisingly though the name that is doing the rounds as frontrunner is that of the veteran banker KV Kamath. The former ICICI chairman's name is being circulated, but did you know that the CBI and ED is waiting to interrogate Kamath in two cases? He is said to be involved in two bank loan fraud cases one of which was to NDTV promoter Prannoy Roy who borrowd in Shell's name and siphoned off to the tune of Rs 40 crores. He now owns a mansion in South Africa's Cape Town. This happened when Chidambaram was the finance minister under Congress rule. Now, the second case is his link to disgraced ICICI CEO Chanda Kochchar's loans.

The ED and CBI was unable to reach out to Kamath as he was stationed in Beijing because of NDB. Kamath is also said to be a crony of the Ambanis and known to have lent huge amounts of loans to Dhirubhai Ambani. He was also said to be a key player when assets were divided between the two Ambani sons. So, this buzz, industry sources say suggests that Ambani might probably push his candidature for the country's plum post of FM.

Now, the million dollar question is if Modi will make a bold move to pick a tainted banker to the FM's post without worrying about the backlash or would he retain Nirmala Sitharaman as the finance minister.