New Delhi:
For the first time, the Banks Board Bureau (BBB) will be interviewing eight senior officials of the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation(LIC),in the rank of executive directors(ED), on Jan 4,to select the new chairman and two managing directors for the corporation
The senior officials, who have been called for the interview, with over two years of residual services and in order of seniority, are- K. Ganesh, ED, Customer Relationship Managemen tCRM), M R Kumar Zonal Manager(ZM), Delhi, Vipin Anand Zonal Manager, Mumbai, TC Suseelkumar, ZM, Hyderabad, MK Gupta ED, Personnel. Raj Kumar CEO, LIC Mtual Fund , HS Sasikumar, ZM,Bhopal, S Nallakuttalam.
Though, all the four existing MDs, Usha Sangwan has already retired on Sep 30, and chairman of LIC retiring in next six to seven months, the government seems to be only interested to fill up the posts which have fallen vacant by March 2019 in the corporation..
VK Sharma, chairman, LIC, will be retiring this month end followed by the superannuating of the other three MDs – Sunita Sharma in March 2019, B Venugopal in May 2019 and Hemant Bhargava in July 2019.
As it would take time to finalise the name of a new chairman, Bhargava may be made the acting chairman of the corporation immediately after Sharma retires for the time being
K Ganesh, MR Kumar and Vipin Anand belong to 1983 batch of LIC while the rest are parts of 1984 batch.Ganesh, the senior most among the eight eligible officials,wouldn’t be considered for the post of LIC chairman, as he doesn’t have two years, mandatory for eligibility, by the time post is falling vacant, and will only be competing with others for the post of one MD.
Excepting Ganesh,rest have residual services of two years and would compete for both the posts of chairman and managing director.
In the last 15 years, the government has followed the principle of seniority while appointing the chairman of the corporation but sometimes superseded senior officials while appointing its MDs. .
On last Friday, the BBB from its Mumbai office has written to LIC informing it about the names of the candidates who have shortlisted and the date for the scheduled interviews on Jan 4..
This is for the first time that BBB, which was formed in 2014 by the Modi government, to select the MD and CEOs and non-executive chairmen for the psu banking industry, will be involved in selecting top officials of the LIC,
Recently, the government had constituted a seven-member panel, headed by BBB chairman B P Sharma, to select chairman and managing directors of public sector insurance companies.
The other members of the panel are Financial Services Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises Secretary and Chairman of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, .
Besides, three insurance sector experts — G N Bajpai, Mathew Varghese and T Bhargava — have been appointed on the selection panel.
These three were also parts of the earlier panel ,which was headed by the DFS secretary, to select top officials of the PSU insurance industry.