State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Dinesh Khara took home Rs 34.42 lakh as annual salary for the financial year 2021-22, which is 13.4% higher than what his predecessor Rajnish Kumar drew in the year-ago period.

The four managing directors of the country’s largest bank earned between Rs 31.66 lakh and Rs 32.62 lakh during FY22. 

Khara’s basic salary was Rs 27 lakh while dearness allowance was Rs 7,42,500, according to the SBI annual report for FY22. His total package in FY21 was Rs 38.12, out of which Rs 400,000 came in as incentives.

Khara joined SBI as probationary officer in 1984 and took charge as chairman in October 2020. Prior to that, he served as the bank’s managing director in charge of global banking and subsidiaries. 

Kumar, Khara’s predecessor, was paid Rs 30.34 lakh, of which Rs 14.04 lakh was in form of leave encashment paid on retirement in October 2020.

Some of the chiefs of other public sector banks received more salary than Khara in FY22. Bank of Baroda MD & CEO Sanjiv Chadha took home Rs 40.46 lakh in FY22 while Canara Bank chief LV Prabhakar got paid Rs 36.89 lakh.

The CEOs of private sector banks draw in much higher salary. In FY21, HDFC Bank MD & CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan took home Rs 4.77 crore as annual salary while his predecessor Aditya Puri received Rs 13.82 crore in the same fiscal. Axis Bank MD Amitabh Chaudhry drew Rs 6.52 crore during the same period. 

Meanwhile, SBI's managing directors Challa Sreenivasulu Setty and Ashwani Bhatia took home Rs 32.62 lakh and Rs 32.15 lakh, respectively. While Swaminathan Janakiraman pocketed Rs 31.74 lakh in FY22, Ashwini Kumar Tewari got paid Rs 31.66 lakh.

In FY22, SBI paid around Rs 1.52 crore to directors for attending meetings of the central board and board-level committees. SBI pays sitting fees of Rs 70,000 to directors for attending central board meetings and Rs 30,000 for attending the meetings of other board-level committees.