On radar, off radar

Flip-flop

With the HAL current chairman Ashok Nayak’s tenure set to end next October when he retires, the PESB, following its routine procedure to find a replacement 8-10 months in advance of a post going vacant, had advertised the vacancy on December 9.

Deccan Herald learnt about the development through an alert in a Bangalore-based blog and when contacted, sources in the HAL said the PESB had mysteriously removed the job description (JD) of the post on the next day itself (December 10). They suspected something amiss.

Although it could not be verified whether the job description was removed the very next day, a thorough browsing of the PESB website revealed that the JD was indeed missing, though the advertisement for the vacancy was there.

Among the 70 vacancies listed on the website, that of the HAL chairman was 66th and was the only vacancy that had no job description.

The matter assumes importance as HAL sources say there are no internal candidates eligible for the chairman’s position in the HAL and that the company might get an external chairman after Nayak’s tenure. They say the only option was their present Director (Finance) D Shivamurti who was earlier not considered for the post for lack of technical qualification.

Attempts to contact PESB Director Vedantam Giri, who had signed under all the other JDs on the list of vacancies, went in vain, with contact extending only up to his personal secretary, Subash Gupta, who was “unable” to put this reporter through to Giri.

However, repeated calls to find out the reasons for the missing JD had some effect about two hours later, when the PESB had put the JD back for the post of HAL chairman.