HPCL Top Job: All Candidates Rejected, Next Steps Advised

The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) has again found no suitable candidate for the top position at Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), marking the third such instance in three years for state oil firms. On 14 June, PESB interviewed eight candidates, including an HPCL director and the managing director of Indraprastha Gas (IGL), but rejected them all.

PESB, in a notification, stated, "The Board did not recommend any candidate for the post of chairman and managing director (CMD) HPCL and advised the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas to choose an appropriate course of further action for selection, including the Search-Cum-Selection Committee (SCSC) or as deemed appropriate with the approval of the competent authority."

The HPCL CMD position will become vacant on 1 September 2024, upon the retirement of the current CMD, Pushp Kumar Joshi, at the age of 60. Previously, PESB also failed to find suitable candidates for the top jobs at Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), leading to extensions and reappointments of retired executives in those companies.

On 3 June 2021, PESB interviewed nine candidates for the ONGC top job, including two IAS officers and directors from MRPL and ONGC, but found none suitable. Consequently, the ministry formed a search-cum-selection panel that appointed Arun Kumar Singh, a retired BPCL executive, as ONGC head after changing the eligibility rules to include those over 60 years of age. Singh's term is set to end in December 2025.

Similarly, for IOC, PESB did not recommend a replacement for Shrikant Madhav Vaidya, who retired in August 2023. Vaidya, who became IOC chairman in July 2020, received a rare one-year re-employment contract post-superannuation. Recently, the oil ministry has called for applications for a new IOC chairman, with a three-member search-cum-selection committee overseeing the process.

The new eligibility criteria require applicants to be engineers, chartered accountants, or cost accountants with postgraduate management degrees from leading institutions and at least five years of leadership experience. The age limit is set at 58 years for internal candidates and 57 years for external ones, with a retirement age of 60.

This stringent selection process contrasts with the ministry's initial proposal to consider candidates up to 61 years of age, which was rejected by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The government has reverted to the previous system of appointing PSU heads with a retirement age of 60 years.

Prior to Vaidya, no Maharatna PSU chairman had received an extension beyond 60 years in recent times. For example, Ranjan Kumar Mohapatra was denied an extension as director of HR at IOC last year.

For the HPCL CMD role, PESB interviewed HPCL director for refineries Shunmugavel Bharathan, four HPCL executive directors (Anuj Kumar Jain, Subodh Batra, K Vinod, and Sandeep Maheshwari), one IOC executive director, a GAIL executive director, and IGL managing director Kamal Kishore Chatiwal. None were deemed suitable for the position.