The government on Thursday appointed non-executive chairpersons at three public-sector banks — Punjab & Sind Bank, Dena Bank and Central Bank of India.

Financial services secretary Rajiv Kumar tweeted: “As part of banking reforms and on recommendation of Banks Board Bureau (BBB), the government appoints Charan Singh, Anjali Bansal, and Tapan Ray as non executive chairperson of Punjab & Sind Bank, Dena Bank and Central Bank of India, respectively.”

The appointments come at a time when both Dena Bank and Central Bank of India are under the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) until they fix their finances. RBI has also imposed restriction on lending by Dena Bank.

As such, 11 of the 21 PSBs are officially stressed as they are under the PCA, while all of them are saddled with massive bad debts. Several scams too have dented image of some of the PSBs.

However, with the resolution process of bad assets under the insolvency framework gaining momentum (The acquisition of Bhushan Steel by Tata Steel subsidiary, for instance, is expected to reduce PSBs’ bad debt by around Rs 35,000 crore) and a substantial provisioning for bad assets having completed, the government believes the worst is already behind.

Tapan Ray retired last year as the corporate affairs secretary, while Charan Singh earlier served as senior economist at IMF as well as a director at Reserve Bank of India.