New Delhi:
The Ministry of Finance(MoF) has shortlisted names of four senior officials of Life Insurance Corporation(LIC), for the selection of a chairman of the corporation
The senior officials of the LIC, who have been shortlisted are- M R Kumar Zonal Manager(ZM), Delhi, Vipin Anand Zonal Manager, Mumbai, TC Suseelkumar, ZM, Hyderabad, Raj Kumar CEO, LIC Mutual Fund .
“Raj Kumar’s name has been added in the last moment. All these names,after the approval of the finance minister Arun Jaitley, will be sent to Appointment Committee of Cabinet(ACC) for its consideration.Finally, it will be prerogative of Prime Minister Office(PMO) to pick up the right candidate who will be heading the LIC for next couple of years.’’ said MoF sources adding that the ministry will select two managing directors in the similar processes.
Also this is the first time that a longer list of four names have been prepared which normally used to have two or maximum three names on earlier instances.It indicates hectic lobbies are hapening for the top post at the life insurance behemoth,said sources in New Delhi.
Earlier, for the first time, the Banks Board Bureau (BBB), which chooses MD & CEO of PSU banks, had interviewed seven senior officials of the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation(LIC),in the rank of executive directors(ED), on Jan 4,to select a new chairman and two e managing directors for the corporation
The officials, who were called for the interview, with over two years of residual services and in order of seniority, are- K. Ganesh, ED, Customer Relationship Managemen t CRM), M R Kumar, Vipin Anand, TC Suseelkumar, MK Gupta ED, Personnel. Raj Kumar CEO, LIC Mutual Fund , HS Sasikumar, ZM,Bhopal,
Though,another official S Nallakuttalam though was called for the interview, he didn’t appear it. . ,
All the four existing MDs,,Usha Sangwan retired on Sep 30, and chairman of LIC VK Sharma retired on Dec 31, are retiring in the next six to seven months. However, the government, through its Jan 04 interview, is planning to fill up the posts which have fallen vacant by March 2019 in the corporation..
The other three superannuating MDs are – Sunita Sharma in March 2019, B Venugopal in May 2019 and Hemant Bhargava in July 2019.
Bhargava has been given additional charge of LIC chairmanship.
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,was not considered for the post of LIC chairman, as he didn't have two years of residual services, by the time post is falling vacant, one of the mandatory eligibility conditions to be a part of the selection processes and will only be competing with others for one of the posts of MDs.
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.