NIA acting chairman may skip promotional exercise panel

Mumbai: In a first, the newly appointed acting chairman of India's largest non-life insurer New India Assurance (NIA), Madhulika Bhaskar may give a miss to be part of the General Insurance Public Sector Association (GIPSA) panel in the soon-to-begin promotional exercise of senior officials for the four public-sector general insurance companies (PSGICs), a source in the Finance Ministry revealed Bizz Buzz, requesting anonymity.

Reason? Even after her elevation to the post of acting Chairman, Bhaskar continues to hold the post of a general manager and a simple logic says that a GM can't interview a prospective GM candidate. The forthcoming exercise will be meant for the promotion of Chief Managers

(Scale-V) to deputy General Manager (Scale-VI) and Scale-VI to Scale-VII (General Manager). The promotional exercise for the middle-level officers has just concluded.

Every year, GIPSA conducts the inter-company promotional exercise for the four insurers-New India, Oriental, National & United and the state-owned reinsurer, GIC Re. The heads of all the five insurers comprise the interview panel. However, in absence of Bhaskar, the interview panel will be having only four heads of the insurers as its members this time.

The date for beginning of the exercise was yet to be approved by the government. The finance ministry is said to be not happy with the list of 41 candidates who were cleared for promotion to Scale-VI among more than 200 candidates who had been interviewed and rather the ministry

slashed it to 26. However, three more standby candidates have been considered for promotion in case of any contingency.

Ms Bhaskar was appointed as an acting Chairman of New India Assurance (NIA), the largest general insurer in the country having operations in 28 overseas countries, on March 20 on a transfer basis. Prior to it, she was handling portfolios like Property and Nuclear and Terror Pools

in GIC Re. She had replaced Atul Sahai, who demitted the office on his superannuation as the CMD of the listed company on February 28.

Unlike the old practice, where normally two general managers of a PSU general insurance company, where vacancy is occurring, are given charge as an interim arrangement till a regular chairman is appointed, this is for the first time, a general manager of another company that too

from GIC Re, was made acting Chairman of another PSU general insurer.

Also, the Banks Board Bureau (BBB), which has been formed to select executive directors and MD & CEOs of PSU banks since 2016 and has been selecting directors and CMDs of PSU general insurance companies since 2018, has not started the process for selecting a CMD for NIA as the Delhi High Court recently observed that the Bureau was not a competent body to appoint directors in PSU general insurers. There is also a current case pending with the Delhi HC, where Inderjeet Singh, general manager, NIA, has challenged government act of appointing Satyajit Tripathi as CMD of United India Insurance (UII) who was selected by the BBB a few months back. Effectively, MoF can't start the process of appointing a regular CMD of NIA till Delhi HC delivers its verdict on the case.