ONGC Chairman and Managing Director appointment delayed

The Oil Ministry on Tuesday said the appointment of permanent Chairman and Managing Director at the nation's highest profit making firm Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has been delayed due to procedural formalities.

ONGC is without a chairman since end-January when R S Sharma retired, on attaining superannuation at the age of 60 years.

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"There has been some delay on account of procedural formalities," Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas R P N Singh said in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

The government headhunters Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) had on October 19 last year selected ONGC Director (Offshore) Sudhir Vasudeva to replace Sharma on January 31. However, the appointment has not yet taken places as complaints were made against him. Many of the complaints came on forged letterheads of Members of Parliament (MPs).

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Vasudeva, 56, was selected by PESB after interviewing eight candidates. Pawan Hans Chairman and Managing Director R K Tyagi was named as thes econd choice to lead the state-owned oil and gas major.

Singh said the proposal for appointment of Vasudeva has been forwarded to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC).

"The proposal for appointment of ONGC chairman and managing director has been sent to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) for obtaining the approval of the ACC," he added.

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Rabi Narayan Bastia, the person behind the discovery of India's biggest gas field, was among the eight candidate who were interviewed by PESB on October 19 last year for the post of ONGC CMD.

Bastia, who quit ONGC in 1996 to join Reliance Industries, is credited with discovering the gigantic Dhirubhai-1 gas field at the Krishna Godavari basin deep-sea block D6 in 2002.

It was ranked as the biggest gas find in the world over the last decade.