Tuesday, March 22, 2011

[rti_india] OilMin to approve appointment of 2 Directors on ONGC board but Cabinet Committee must refuse to appoint secretly "Hand-Picked" persons whose competence & Integrity is unknown..

Cabinet Secretary to GOI,

New Delhi

Dear Sir,

Kindly refer to the media news placed below:

OilMin to approve appointment of 2 directors on ONGC board

You are well aware of the criminal irregularities, corrupt practices and wide-spread corruption in the Petroleum Ministry having "Zero Integrity Value" as one of the important Union Ministries.

That has now reportedly proposed to appoint two undeclared persons, out of five, short-listed secretly without inviting applications by public notice from the eligible persons and without making the criteria known for independent Directors.

What is happening in a non-transparent and undemocratic manner and hence cannot be accepted since violating Constitution of India and against the transparency & accountability of public administration towards the citizens.

It may kindly be appreciated that the so called independent Directors of PSUs are puppets of the Govt in power and seriously lack independence and the credibility. The country cannot continue to have such persons on Board of Directors of PSUs, in general, and very important Oil PSU like ONGC.

Please show them one Youtube video of IOC AGM in which the discussion was hijacked by one past IOOA President when Chairman Mr Sarthak Behuria, Govt Director Mr S Sundareshan were silent spectators and, shockingly, independent Directors, also not intervening at all - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD22Z_Zyvlw

In this 48th AGM of IOC or any other AGMs of IOC BPCL HPCL of last few years that I attended, I have not come across any independent Director ever contributing anything to the business conducted.

Rather, in total disrespect to the shareholders, these independent Directors, mid-way from AGM, disappear as can be seen in the message in public domain -

Mrs Rama Bijapurkar absent in 2008 & 2009 BPCL AGMs - Two women Independent Directors Prof (Dr) Indira J Parikh & Smt (Dr) Indu Sahani VANISHED from IOC Golden Jubilee AGM on 14th September 2009 - http://bit.ly/gEupwN

Please bring this serious public grievance to the notice of the Prime Minister and all the Cabinet Ministers, as they are likely to be the decision maker in this appointment of two independent Directors for ONGC, to refrain from the arbitrary and illegal act.

Please let me know of action taken per return.

Regards,
--
(Babubhai Vaghela)
C 202, Shrinandnagar V, Makarba Road Vejalpur, Ahmedabad - 380051
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OilMin to approve appointment of 2 directors on ONGC board

Written by Admin Friday, 11 February 2011 18:07

After weeks of delay, Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy has agreed to clear appointment of two independent directors on board of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), a requirement that was must for the state-owned firm's Rs 13,000 crore public offering next month.

ONGC has six functional directors, besides chairman and managing director. It also has two government-appointed nominee directors taking the total strength to nine.

The company, at present, has four independent directors and needed five more to meet market regulator SEBI's listing norm of having equal number of executive and non-executive directors, industry sources said.

However, since ONGC is without a permanent Chairman and vacancies of Director (Human Resources) and Director (Exploration) have not been filled, the effective strength of full-time functional directors together with government nominee directors was down to six.

Sources said the oil ministry under the previous minister Murli Deora had shortlisted five independent directors but before the file could be signed, a Cabinet reshuffle brought Reddy at the helms of affairs.

Reddy, they said, has agreed to clear appointment two out of the five shortlisted candidates to meet the SEBI's listing norm for now.

It is unclear if he will change the remaining three. Sources said the names cleared will go to the Cabinet Committee on Appointments (ACC) and final approval may come just in time for ONGC to file red herring prospectus for the public offering in the week beginning February 21.

ONGC's follow-on public offering (FPO), through which the government plans to sell its five per cent stake to raise about Rs 13,000 crore, is to hit the market on March 15.

The company is without a permanent chairman and managing director since this month following retirement of R S Sharma. So is the case upon retirement of D K Pande as Director (Exploration).

Government headhunters Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) has identified successors for both the posts but Reddy is yet to approve of their names. PESB made the selections when Deora was the Oil Minister.

PESB is yet to hold interviews for Director (Human Resources), a post which fell vacant in July last year when A K Balyan moved to Petronet LNG as Managing Director.

A K Hazarika, Director (Onshore) and the senior most on ONGC board, is officiating as Chairman and Manging Director.

Last month, the Government had appointed Bank of America Corp, Nomura Holdings , HSBC Holdings Plc, JM Financial Services, Citigroup Inc and Morgan Stanley to handle the FPO.

Post offer, the government stake in ONGC would come down to 69.14 per cent from the current 74.14 per cent.