According to ‘news’ that is viral on social media, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has been appointed the Governor of the Bank of England. Rajan, who moved back to Chicago after his stint at the RBI to teach at the Booth School of Business. It is being claimed that he will now take over the reins of the Bank of England.

Congratulating Mr. Raghuram Rajan, elected as Governor for Bank of England. And, as usual, whatever we Indians have with us, the value of those things is recognised by foriegners and they take it away. Posted by Satprakash Sharma on Friday, April 27, 2018

The above post was uploaded on April 28 on Facebook by an individual user. It has been shared more than 7000 times till now. The post says, “Congratulating Mr. Raghuram Rajan, elected as Governor for Bank of England. And, as usual, whatever we Indians have with us, the value of those things is recognised by foriegners and they take it away.”

Messages congratulating Dr. Rajan have flooded Facebook with many users sharing the ‘news’ of Dr. Rajan’s appointment. This ‘news’ has also been shared on Twitter. Majority of the posts on both Twitter and Facebook are by individual users with almost identical text, which suggests that this rumour is circulating on WhatsApp.

This was also published on Siasat.com.

Among prominent people, Mr Shashi Tharoor tweeted the article by Siasat.

Remarkable: India’s RaghuramRajan has been appointed Governor of the Bank of England! https://t.co/xdIop5Ltuv With an Indian (NasserHusain) having captained the England cricket team already, all that’s left to complete a reverse colonization is for an Indian to be Prime Minister. — Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 5, 2018

Not appointed

Contrary to these rumours, it may be stated that Dr. Raghuram Rajan has NOT been appointed Governor of Bank of England. Alt News contacted Raghuram Rajan regarding the social media rumours. In his response, he stated, “Sorry, but this is fake news. I am happy with my current job and have not searched for, nor got, any other.”

It has been widely reported that Dr. Rajan is one of the contenders for the top job at the Bank of England. An article by the London based financial daily The Financial Times states, “Attracting Raghuram Rajan, the highly respected Chicago-based economist and former Reserve Bank of India governor, would be a coup, as would securing Agustín Carstens, Mexico’s central bank chief and the new general manager of the Bank of International Settlements”. The article goes on to say that Philip Hammond, UK chancellor, is initiating the process to select the next governor of Bank of England to replace Mark Carney next year. According to the article, the chancellor has said he has already begun looking for candidates. The Financial Times had also published a cartoon on April 29 to this effect.

Dr. Rajan had earlier too been at the receiving end of fake news on social media. In a post that had gone viral in March 2018, it was claimed that Dr. Rajan had warned former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Congress President Rahul Gandhi about the PNB scam but no action was taken. This time round, it seems that overzealous fans of Dr. Rajan have jumped the gun and appointed him the Governor rather prematurely.

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