Rupshikha Saikia Bora ignored again for top OIL post; babus in fray

OIL director RS Bora

IN YET another reflection of dominance of the senior babus in top PSU jobs, senior IAS officers Anil Kumar Jain and Ravi Kapoor are among the 10 candidates in fray for the post of CMD at Oil India Limited, the country’s second biggest state-owned oil and gas explorer.
OIL Director (Finance) Rupshikha Saikia Borah, who was previously selected for the top job by government headhunter PESB but rejected by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), was not considered even though she had...
applied for the top post.
The ten candidates short-listed from nearly 60 applicants have been called for interview by a three member Search-cum- Selection Committee headed by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha on April 25, say media reports.
Of the short-listed, four are bureaucrats. While Jain is a 1986 Batch IAS officer from Madhya Pradesh cadre who is currently Adviser with NITI Aayog, Kapoor is 1986 batch IAS officer from Assam Meghalya cadre who is currently Joint Secretary in Department of Commerce.
Both of them have previously served in the Oil Ministry.
1988-batch Assam Meghalya cadre IAS officer Jishnu Barua, currently Joint Secretary in Department of Personnel & Training has also been called for interview.
1988-batch Assam Meghalya cadre IAS officer Jishnu Barua, currently Joint Secretary in Department of Personnel & Training has also been called for interview, sources said.
From within Oil India, Director (Operations) P K Sharma has been called for interview.
Others in fray include P K Rao, Director (Operations), ONGC Videsh Ltd and Ashutosh Karnatak, Director (Project), GAIL India Ltd. Sunil K Bharti, who previously worked with Cairn India has been called for interview and he was the only candidate called for the interview from the private sector.
The government had taken the search committee route after it failed to get a suitable candidate in previous three attempts by the Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB).
Earlier, the government top headhunter in its first round of interview in November 2014 found Borah and five others unsuitable to replace SK Srivastava, who retired on June 30, 2015.
It, however, selected Borah when it conducted a second round of interviews in February 2015.
This led to intervention from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) asking what had changed between November 2014 and February 2015 that Borah became suitable from unsuitable.
Following objection from the PMO, PESB scrapped her selection and fresh applications invited.
None of the 12 candidates including Borah were found suitable in the third round of interviews done by PESB in September.
After Srivastava retired on June 30, 2015 the Oil Ministry named senior bureaucrat U P Singh as the acting Chairman and Managing Director of OIL.
Singh, who is additional secretary (exploration) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, will continue to hold the responsibility till further orders.
The Navratna PSU will be the second big PSU to have its head selected through a search committee. In February, Gurdeep Singh, MD, Gujarat State Electricity Corp, was appointed as the CMD of Maharatna PSU, NTPC, India’s largest power producer.