New Delhi: HDFC Bank has appointed Rajiv Kumar, who until last year headed Election Commission of India (ECI), as its new chairman for a four-year term. Kumar oversaw the 2024 Lok Sabha elections during his time as the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).The bank’s board has cleared Kumar’s appointment as an independent director for four years starting on June 30. It also cleared the appointment, including remuneration of Kumar as a part-time chairman of the bank for a period of three years, effective from the date as approved by the RBI, the bank said in a filing.The position was vacant since March after Atanu Chakraborty resigned abruptly over “ethical concerns”.“Certain happenings and practices within the bank, that I have observed over last two years, are not in congruence with my personal values and ethics,” Chakraborty had said.Kumar’s run as the 25th CEC was not without friction. Opposition parties repeatedly accused the EC under his watch of tilting in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s favour.During the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, at a rally in Rajasthan’s Banswara, Modi claimed the Congress manifesto had promised to seize and redistribute private wealth of Indians among “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.In the same speech, the prime minister claimed that the Congress would snatch away the “mangalsutras” worn by married Hindu women in its bid to distribute wealth among Muslims.In response to the complaints from the Congress and other political parties over Modi’s speech, the EC sent a notice to BJP president J.P. Nadda to ensure that all star campaigners of the party “set high standards of political discourse and observe provisions of model code of conduct in letter and spirit”. It did not seek a respose from Modi or name Modi in the notice.In his farewell remarks, Kumar argued that the institution was being unfairly scapegoated by those unwilling to accept poll outcomes.He also brushed aside claims of EVM tampering and manipulation of electoral rolls, maintaining that “processes can’t be judged by results.”Earlier, Kumar, a 1984 batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, also served as finance secretary and secretary of the Department of Financial Services between 2017 and 2020.In his profile, HDFC Bank has noted that as a secretary, Kumar had “led a comprehensive clean-up of public sector bank balance sheets by mandating transparent recognition and provisioning of NPAs and by enforcing accountability among borrowers under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code framework.”The bank also attributes to him the rollout of the so-called 4R strategy – recognition, resolution, recapitalisation and Reforms – along with a crackdown on fraudulent financial practices that helped restore public sector banks to profitability.Describing the scale of that overhaul, the bank’s profile added: “Fraud checks, specialised monitoring above Rs 250 crore, and IT-based risk scoring on 34-plus factors replaced soft signals with loose controls, built into lending by large consortiums of often more than 25 banks. Opacity, suddenly, carried a cost. A total reset of the Creditor-Debtor relationship with a loud and clear message that money has to be lent prudentially and debtors must pay back.”HDFC Bank has also clarified that Kumar has no familial ties to any of its other directors or key managerial staff, as per news agency PTI.