ONGC's Search-cum-Selection Committee finalises 9 candidates for company's top post
New Delhi: The Search-cum-Selection Committee, tasked to identify a suitable chief for state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has finalised nine candidates of which three are from the private sector, three are internal claimants and three from other state-run oil and gas entities.
Based on the higher eligibility age limit proposed by the Petroleum & Natural Gas Ministry, the Search Panel has included from the ONGC its acting Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) Alka Mittal, Director (Exploration) Rajesh Kumar Srivastava and Director (Offshore) Pankaj Kumar. External candidates from oil and gas public sector undertakings (PSUs) are current CMD of Indian Oil Corp S M Vaidya, CMD of Bharat Petroleum Corp Arun Kumar Singh and CMD of Engineers India Ltd Vartika Shukla.
The interview, likely to be held in the Ministry's conference room on August 27, will also see three private sector candidates: 1. Ashish Bhandari who is currently Managing Director and CEO of Thermax Group; 2. Nitin Kumar Birla who specialises in Project and Asset Management (Upstream) at Kuwait Gulf Oil Company; and, 3. Baroruchi Mishra, Project Director for Growth and Transition Projects at Shell India.
However, since Mittal retires just four days after the slated interview, the Ministry plans to appoint Srivastava as the next acting CMD of ONGC until the candidate selected by the Search Panel does not get the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC).
This would make Srivastava a record third interim chairman as no full-time head of India's national oil and gas company has yet been selected in 17 months since the post fell vacant after Shashi Shanker superannuated on March 31, 2021.
Subhash Kumar, the senior-most director on the company board and the director for finance, was named officiating head. And when Kumar retired on December 31, 2021, Alka Mittal, Director for Human Resources, was given an additional charge.
The Search Committee, which was in February this year tasked to identify suitable candidates, began work only this month after terms of reference were finalised. It has shortlisted candidates on the basis of the oil ministry's revised eligibility criteria that raised the eligibility age.
The ministry criteria proposed that any candidate to be eligible for consideration should not be more than 60 years of age on the date of occurrence of vacancy, which arose on March 31, 2021. Prior to this change, the minimum age prescribed for being eligible for the top job was 45 years.
