The Government has appointed a new panel comprising Mr Sam Pitroda, Mr Nandan Nilekani, Cabinet Secretary, Mr K M Chandrasekhar, and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr T K A Nair, for selecting a Chairman and Managing Director for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

The earlier panel, headed by the Cabinet Secretary, has been scrapped.

This panel had short listed 11 candidates for the post including Mr R. K. Upadhyay, Managing Director, Telecommunications Consultants of India Ltd; Mr K. L. Dhingra, Managing Director, Indian Telephone Industries Ltd; and Mr Anil Kaushal, Chief General Manager, Northern Telecom Maintenance Region, BSNL. The search committee had failed to attract any one from the private sector.

The decision to re-start the entire process comes after a section of the BSNL worker's union filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Delhi High Court against the process.

The petition challenged the change in the eligibility criteria. “The arbitrary change was done contrary to the initiative that the Prime Minister took in January by appointing the Pitroda Committee, which in February, had recommended appointing professionals for the top posts at the market salary levels,” stated the petition.

The union, Sanchar Nigam Executive Association, said that it had brought this “arbitrary” change to the notice of the Government on October 1 clearly pointing out the involvement of the then Telecom Minister, Mr A. Raja, with the ulterior motive to select Mr R.K. Upadhyay (currently CMD, TCIL) for the post of CMD-BSNL and Mr Kuldip Singh (acting CMD-MTNL since December 2009) for the post of CMD-MTNL.

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