The Hindu Business Line : KoPT board to meet after 3-month gap

As the situation stands now, the meeting of the board of trustees of Kolkata Port Trust is to be held towards the end of this month after a gap of nearly three months (normally it is a monthly affair) but the board members will not be present in full strength.

Only seven out of the full board of 22 members will be present. Those to be present will include Chairman of the port, the newly appointed Deputy Chairman of Haldia dock, two labour representatives and three others, one each from the Indian Navy, the Railways and Customs.

The tenure of the last board expired on March 31,2006 but the Union Government is yet to name all the members for the new board.

Unannounced names

The names yet to be finalised include, the representatives of various user groups such as shippers association, shipping interests, clearing and forwarding agents associations, stevedores associations and the chambers of commerce.

Each of these groups lobbies with appropriate authorities in Delhi to have a berth on the board. Also, the names of "other interests", usually political appointees, have not yet been announced. The Ministry is still to decide who will be the next Deputy Chairman of Kolkata Dock System (KDS). The KDS Deputy Chairman, like the Chairman of the port and Deputy Chairman of Haldia dock, is also an ex-officio member of the board of trustees of the port. However, the post of Deputy Chairman of KDS has been lying vacant for nearly six months now.

It is now learnt that the person earlier selected for the post would not be able to join for reasons unknown and therefore a fresh circular has been issued.

The Kolkata port authorities, however, are not unduly worried about the truncated size of the board.

"We do not think that the reduced strength of the board will in any way stand in the way of holding the board meeting as we'll have the quorum of five members," said a spokesman for KoPT.

The authorities, however, hope that a few more names might be announced in next one week or so.