| No. | Name | Term of office | |
| Began | Ended | ||
| 1 | Osborne Smith | 1 April 1935 | 30 June 1937 |
| 2 | James Braid Taylor | 1 July 1937 | 17 February 1943 |
| 3 | C. D. Deshmukh | 11 August 1943 | 30 June 1949 |
| 4 | Benegal Rama Rau | 1 July 1949 | 14 January 1957 |
| 5 | K. G. Ambegaonkar | 14 January 1957 | 28 February 1957 |
| 6 | H. V. R. Iyengar | 1 March 1957 | 28 February 1962 |
| 7 | P. C. Bhattacharya | 1 March 1962 | 30 June 1967 |
| 8 | L. K. Jha | 1 July 1967 | 3 May 1970 |
| 9 | B. N. Adarkar | 4 May 1970 | 15 June 1970 |
| 10 | S. Jagannathan | 16 June 1970 | 19 May 1975 |
| 11 | N. C. Sen Gupta | 19 May 1975 | 19 August 1975 |
| 12 | K. R. Puri | 20 August 1975 | 2 May 1977 |
| 13 | M. Narasimham | 3 May 1977 | 30 November 1977 |
| 14 | I. G. Patel | 1 December 1977 | 15 September 1982 |
| 15 | Manmohan Singh | 16 September 1982 | 14 January 1985 |
| 16 | Amitav Ghosh | 15 January 1985 | 4 February 1985 |
| 17 | R. N. Malhotra | 4 February 1985 | 22 December 1990 |
| 18 | S. Venkitaramanan | 22 December 1990 | 21 December 1992 |
| 19 | C. Rangarajan | 22 December 1992 | 21 November 1997 |
| 20 | Bimal Jalan | 22 November 1997 | 6 September 2003 |
| 21 | Y. V. Reddy | 6 September 2003 | 5 September 2008 |
| 22 | D. Subbarao | 5 September 2008 | 4 September 2013 |
| 23 | Raghuram Rajan | 4 September 2013 | 4 September 2016 |
| 24 | Dr.Urjit R Patel | 4 September 2016 | —— |
