Khattar gets full charge at MUL

NEW DELHI, JULY 14: With the one-year old peace accord it announced with Suzuki Motor Corporation of Japan not working too well due to the totally different management styles of Maruti Udyog’s managing director R S S L N Bhaskarudu and his would-be successor Jagdish Khattar, the government today decided to shift Bhaskarudu to the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB). The papers to shift were formally cleared by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) a few days ago and have now been sent to the Department of Personnel for implementation. Formal orders are likely to be issued early next week.

With this, Maruti’s second managing director Khattar will now get full charge of running the company under the accord on June 7 last year, Khattar became second MD last fortnight, and was to get full charge on January 1, 2000. Bhaskarudu who was to finish his tenure as Maruti’s managing director at the end of the year will now get a three-year tenure at PESB, and will have a rank equal to a secretary to the governmentof India. The government decided to advance Khattar’s succession date since it was found that, despite the accord, things were still not running too smoothly at Maruti — while Maruti’s competitors were quickly off the mark and deciding on new models and marketing strategies in a jiffy, the sharp division in Maruti resulted in most decisions taking place at a snail’s pace. As a result, Maruti has been losing market share to new entrants such as Hyundai, Daewoo.

If the bitter acrimony for over a year before the peace accord ensured Maruti could not decide on introducing new models and new engines, the fact that Bhaskarudu didn’t see eye to eye with Khattar ensured that these critical decisions took ages to clear even afterwards. This, in fact, was one of the reasons that when the Supreme Court came up with stringent emission norms in May, the technological laggard Maruti was caught napping and its car couldn’t meet the new Euro-I standards.