Govt defends choice of PSU chief without PESB clearance

NEW DELHI, March 22: The Government has strongly defended in the Delhi High Court appointment of civil servants as chief executives in publi...

NEW DELHI, March 22: The Government has strongly defended in the Delhi High Court appointment of civil servants as chief executives in public sector undertakings (PSUs) without following Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) selection procedure.

An affidavit filed by Department of Personnel said civil servants were appointed as it was felt that suitable candidates might not be found through PESB selection.

A petitioner, B L Wadhera had questioned appointment of P C Sen as Managing Director (MD) of Indian Airlines, Brijesh Kumar as MD of Air-India, M D Asthana as Director Food Corporation of India (FCI), M Gopalakrishnan as MD Rural Electrification Corporation, Uddesh Kohli as Chairman cum MD Power Finance Corporation and K K Mathur as MD India Trade Promotion Organisation, as these were made without PESB nod. The Government in its affidavit cited a 1987 resolution which provided that in special cases recruitment could be made from organised services under the government. “Such cases would be where,because of special circumstances, it is necessary to place a member of an organised service in a public sector enterprise or where, because of the nature of the enterprise or its poor health, it would be difficult to attract good professional managers on a tenure basis,” the affidavit filed through standing counsel A K Vali said.

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On appointment of Sen in 1994 for a three-year tenure, government said, “The then prevailing state of industrial relations and financial status of Indian Airlines was such that it was not realistic to expect persons of high calibre and good prospects elsewhere to offer themselves for the post of chief executive of the airlines. “In the preceding five years, there had been as many as seven chief executives of Indian Airlines. Judging from the circumstances in which the chief executives left the organisation after serving for very short durations, it was felt unlikely that PESB would have been able to attract a really competent person to be the chief executive on a durable basisfor the airlines,” it said. Therefore, it was considered necessary to dispense with PESB procedure and appoint a suitable person from the organised civil service to be the chief executive of Indian Airlines, the government said defending its decision. It said another reason for appointing a civil servant to the post was at that particular point, restructuring of the top management of Air-India and Indian Airlines to bring about closer integration and coordination was being considered.

“If the appointments were to be made in the usual manner through PESB, the government would have lost flexibility of restructuring of the top management because then it would have been difficult to dispense with the services of CMD soon after the appointment,” government said.