Coal India Ltd may go headless soon if its present Chairman S. Narsing Rao proceeds with his plan to quit and take up responsibilities at the office of the Chief Minister of Telangana.
Mr. Rao, 54, was a Andhra cadre Indian Administrative Service officer prior to joining CIL, a job he bagged after a stiff selection procedure run by the Public Enterprise Selection Board. Central to the process is clearance by the Central Vigilance Commission.
The 1986 batch officer was the Chairman and Managing Director of another coal company , Singareni Collieries Company Ltd., a joint venture of the Centre and Andhra Pradesh government prior to his joining CIL in April 2012 for a five-year term. He quit the IAS to take up his responsibilities here.
Mr Rao, hails from the same district Medak, as the Chief Minister designate K Chandrasekhar Rao.
He may be appointed the Principal Secretary to the CM.
However it has now been revealed that in another instance of bureaucratic delays, the papers pertaining Mr Rao’s resignation from service papers got caught in red tape and technically he still remains an IAS
When contacted, Mr. Rao, now in Hyderabad, declined to either confirm or deny the development.
However, if he does send in his papers to the Union Coal Ministry he would be leaving CIL at a time when it is struggling to keep its production on track.
Indications were that he may only take up the resignation issue next week after CIL’s annual results are published.
But his new boss the Chief Minister-designate is also in a hurry as the state’s is set to be born on June 2.
