NEW DELHI : The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Tuesday notified the constitution of a six-member "Search Committee' to scrutinise candidates and come up with an appropriate choice for appointment as a regular chairman-cum-managing director for state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) that has, of late, been mired in controversy over the issue.

Six-member panel

The six-member Committee will be headed by the Chairman, Public Sector Enterprises Board (PSEB), N.K. Sinha, and will have the Secretary (Petroleum), M.S. Srinivasan, the Director, IIM-Ahmedabad, Prof. Bakul H. Dholakia, the former Secretary (Petroleum), Vijay Kelkar, and two members of the PSEB as its members. The constitution of a Search Committee comes after the rejection of regular appointment of the present incumbent, R.S. Sharma, by the Cabinet Committee on Appointments (CCA) leading to unrest and uproar in the ONGC. The ONGC employees have already threatened to go on strike over the issue and demanded that the appointment of Mr. Sharma, scrutinised and approved by PSEB, be upheld.

The CCA had scrapped the appointment "keeping in mind" the importance of energy security for the country and the thrust on exploration, drilling and refinery sectors both at the domestic and international levels.

Six names short-listed

It had suggested constitution of a Search Committee to scrutinise and finalise the appointment of a new chairman within three months.

Similarly, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry scouted for suitable individuals and experts to be part of that committee and short-listed six names.

"The new Search Committee has been constituted and a notification was issued on March 5. The committee will scrutinise all the names on a case-to-case basis and then send its recommendations to the CCA for approval.

This whole process is likely to be completed by the end of next month and the uncertainty over who would head the ONGC will be over by that time,'' a senior Ministry official remarked.

Sources in the Ministry disclosed that Mr. Sharma could apply to the new Search Committee, along with any other senior official of ONGC, as he had not been debarred from this process.

However, Mr. Sharma is reportedly reluctant and is unlikely to apply before the new committee for regularisation of his appointment but will remain in contention for the top post.

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