Tuhin Kanta Pandey | The calm bureaucrat Premium

Tuhin Kanta Pandey borrows from a near four-decade career in public administration that had him serving as a district collector and magistrate of Odisha’s Sambalpur district to being recently made Revenue Secretary in addition to his position as Finance Secretary.

Anyone who knows the incoming SEBI chief, either as a reporter or as a former colleague, inevitably recall his calm demeanour and commitment to work. For Saroj Sarangi, now retired as the medical officer of the Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha, the news of Tuhin Kanta Pandey’s appointment as the next SEBI chief was of much joy. He told The Hindu about the appointment bringing immense value considering his efficiency and fluid expertise in dealing with public matters. 

The 1987 batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre succeeds Madhabi Puri Buch. While Ms. Buch brought in her experience from the corporate world to the regulator’s office, she also faced conflict of interest allegations in the conduct of a SEBI investigation against the Adani Group for stock price manipulations.

In contrast, Mr. Pandey borrows from a near four-decade career in public administration that had him serving as a district collector and magistrate of Odisha’s Sambalpur district to being recently made Revenue Secretary in addition to his position as Finance Secretary. However, his most notable run was at the Dept of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM). During his five-year stay there, he oversaw the privatisation of then struggling national carrier Air India and the IPO of the state-insurer LIC. Mr. Pandey’s five-year tenure at DIPAM is the longest of any Secretary in the department formed in 1999.  

He was a student of Economics at the Panjab University (Chandigarh). Further, he attended the University of Birmingham for his MBA.  

In his four-decade long career, Mr. Pandey has moved back and forth from Delhi and Odisha — each time holding crucial social and economic departments. Early in his career, Mr. Pandey worked as the Executive Director at the Odisha State Finance Corporation (OSFC) and Managing Director of Odisha Small Industries Corporation (OSIC). This was before he took charge of Sambalpur district. He then moved from Odisha on central deputation as the Deputy Secretary at the Department of Commerce and later to the Regional Office of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).  

Later, on his repatriation to the Odisha cadre, he worked with the State’s transport, health and commercial taxes departments. He took over as the Principal Secretary of Odisha’s Finance Department in 2016. Thereafter, he returned to Delhi as the DIPAM Secretary in October 2019.  

Retired IAS officer Pradeep Biswal, and Mr. Pandey’s former colleague, recalled in an article for ‘Odisha+’ about him being revered as an “honest, upright and decisive administrator” as well as a “very polite and affectionate person”. Remembering his appointment as the Commissioner of Commercial Taxes in Odisha, he wrote that the “workhorse” started his job “most sincerely and efficiently”. “He did not go for frequent field visits like his predecessors and confined himself in his office,” he said, adding, “He was a reformist and as such tried to amend the archaic provisions in the acts and rules to fit into the requirements of his time”.