Picosecond time-resolved fluorescence measurements have been carried out on 9,9'-bianthryl in three imidazolium ionic liquids to probe the excited state dynamics. In the early time-scale, the fluorescence spectra of bianthryl have been found to consist of emission from both locally excited (LE) and charge transfer (CT) states. The LE → CT relaxation time, as estimated from the decay of the fluorescence intensity of the LE emission, is found to vary between 230 and 390 ps, while the average solvent relaxation time, as estimated from the analysis of time-dependent fluorescence Stokes shift, is found to vary between 620 ps and 1840 ps, depending on the viscosity of the ionic liquids. The results confirm that while in conventional less viscous solvents the CT formation kinetics of bianthryl occurs simultaneously with the solvation dynamics, in ionic liquids the two processes mostly occur in different time scales.