AS MANY as six PSU banks will go
headless in the next few months. While chairman and managing director
positions at Indian Overseas bank and Bank of Baroda will be vacant
in August, Canara Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce will go headless
in October. Two managing director...
posts are lying vacant at State
Bank of India, the largest lender in the country. United Bank of
India has been without a chairman for few months.
The Department of Personnel and
Training (DoPT) has made it categorically clear that top-level
appointments in the financial sector will have to be strictly on the
basis of seniority.
The instruction of DoPT, which reports
to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently asked the finance ministry
to follow the norms in a specific case involving the appointment of
the managing director of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), will also
be applicable to public sector banks while filling up top posts like
executive director and chairman and managing director.
The DoPT asked the finance ministry to
follow the principle of seniority while filling up the vacant post of
managing director in LIC.
The directive from the DoPT came after
some senior officials of the corporation with over 32 years of
services and have residual services of three years or more had
represented to it about how the finance ministry is excluding them
from selection process.
One post of managing director has been
lying vacant after Sushoban Sarkar retired in May. DoPT norms are
uniform for all financial institutions.
The finance ministry, during the UPA
government’s tenure, had justified its decision to exclude LIC
officials from the selection process on the basis of a “policy”
which warrants that all those officials who appear for the interview
thrice consecutively but not been selected have to be excluded from
the selection process for any new posts and fresh eligible candidates
in order of seniority should be included in the zone of
consideration.
The finance ministry argued that all
these officials were part of selection process when chairman and
three other managing directors of the corporation were selected and
cannot be considered any further.
Normally, such guidelines relating to
omission of people are not applied while making appointments for
other PSUs, including public sector banks.
This is the second time when the
finance ministry method of filling up top posts in LIC has been asked
to be corrected.
The cabinet secretary had earlier found
fault with the finance ministry’s attempt to fill up the fourth
post of managing director which was created in 2013 in corporation
without getting sanction from the cabinet. The ministry then
corrected its move and appointed SB Mainak after formally getting
sanction from ACC.
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