The practice often adopted earlier while selecting chairmen for Nabard was to go in for someone from the administrative services. While the retirement age for IAS officers was 58, that for senior Nabard officials (only at the level of chairman and managing director) was 60. With the retirement age for both now at par, few IAS officials would evince the same interest in Nabard chairmanship, considering the power these officials enjoy.

This could be one of the reasons why Divakar Dev, a UP cadre bureaucrat who had earlier put in a deputation stint at Nabard, did not show much interest although his name came upfor consideration even before P Kotaiah, the earlier chairman, retired on May 31, point out middle-level officials.

The option would be to go in for a commercial banker as is the case with Mishra. Here, an internally-circulated note points out, the appointment could create a breach of seniority. This is because the CMD of any other commercial bank would be junior to the SBI chairman, who is also on the board of Nabard.

And if this is possible, members of the officers association argue, there is very little reason why the present Nabard managing director YC Nanda should be denied the position of chairman (with the senior-most executive director SD Sharma taking over as MD) only on the grounds of being junior to the SBI chairman now.

The note points out that Nabard has a history of organisational excellence which scaled new heights under P Kotaiah, who had a long innings in the apex bank in various capacities. While the creation of rural infrastructure under the RIDF, extending the scope of self-helpgroups, formulation of kisan credit cards and recapitalisation of weak institutions are all part of banking activities, they are more in the nature of development banking rather than commercial banking, and can be best carried out by those who have long exposure to rural development banking, point out Nabard officials.