OVL MD appointment through search-cum-selection committee
Narendra K Verma, the previous managing director of OVL, retired on January 31, 2019, and the post has been lying vacant since then. In the absence of any full-time head, OVL did not make a single acquisition in 2019, records on the company website showed.
The oil ministry has now invited applications for the post by February 6 which will be screened by the search-cum-selection committee, according to the notice inviting application.
The panel includes Oil Secretary M M Kutty, former Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Chairman M A Pathan, and Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) Chairman K D Tripathi.
PESB is the designated government headhunter for selecting directors and heads of public sector companies. It routinely initiates the process of inviting applications at least six months prior to the post falling vacant but the same was not done in case of OVL in 2018.
Sources said in the case of OVL, the oil ministry wanted a search-cum-selection committee to do the headhunting.
But differences with different departments of the government over bureaucrats applying delayed the process.
The oil ministry, sources said, wanted any bureaucrat selected to be allowed to come to OVL on deputation. Others in the government, however, had favoured the bureaucrat resigning from service before joining OVL.
The oil ministry seemed to have prevailed as the advertisement states that joint secretaries in the Government of India and above rank officers can apply without resigning from service.
"The post has been exempted from the 'Rule of immediate absorption' and candidates may apply on deputation basis also," it said.
The government had in February 2015 approved the constitution of a search-cum-selection committee for selection to board level posts in central PSUs.
However, prior concurrence of the Department of Public Enterprises and PESB was needed if the committee route was to be taken. This requirement was dispensed with in November 2018.
OVL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC). It has 39 projects in 19 countries spanning from Venezuela to New Zealand. It has so far invested USD 29.28 billion in projects abroad.
Its last acquisition was a 4 per cent stake in Lower Zakum Concession in UAE in February 2018.
But some of its past decisions, such as the 2014 decision to buy 16 per cent stake in Mozambique gas block, have come under the intense scrutiny of the present government. ANZ ABM ABM