Subir Raha bows out of ONGC, after all

NEW DELHI: A terse missive from the petroleum ministry on Thursday afternoon set to rest all speculation on the future of Subir Raha, 57, chairman and managing director of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation. He was out, and, for the time being, replaced by R S Sharma, the senior-most fulltime functional director at India’s largest oil company.

Raha’s five-year term had officially ended on Wednesday. The selection process for a new chairman and managing director would be initiated through the Public Enterprises Selection Board.

The big question now is, what next for the navratna chairman whom former petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar wanted to enfeeble? “I have not really given a thought to it,” Raha told DNA Money. “Till today, I was thinking what next in ONGC,” he said.

Raha took on Aiyar in what proved to be the crucial last year of his tenure knowing very well that his job at the helm will be at stake.

The company more than tripled profit under Raha’s leadership as oil prices soared. At the professional level, there have been murmurs about his way of functioning.

A bureaucrat even claimed that there were a lot of complaints against Raha and “what the government did was merely not renew his contract which ended as per routine after five years”.

Nonetheless, part of the credit for giving ONGC a new image and expanding the portfolio to more than a dozen countries surely goes to Raha.