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ONGC Chairman Age Limit Raised to 59, Widening Candidate Pool
The government relaxed ONGC's chairman entry age to 59 and offered a five-year tenure, widening the candidate pool. Applications close July 21, with a search committee to pick the successor.
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The government relaxed the eligibility rules for ONGC's next chairman, raising the maximum entry age to 59 and offering a fixed three-year term extendable by two years. The move widens the pool of contenders for India's largest oil and gas producer, whose current chairman Arun Kumar Singh steps down on December 7.
The Public Enterprises Selection Board, the government's headhunter for state-run firms, invited applications under the new terms. Candidates must not have turned 59 by the vacancy date. The selected candidate gets a three-year appointment, extendable by two years after a performance review. Any employment beyond age 60 will be on a contract basis, the advertisement said.
The selection will be handled by a search-cum-selection committee formed by the oil ministry, bypassing the normal PESB process. That is a departure from standard practice for board-level posts in central public sector enterprises.
The age relaxation breaks from the residual-service criterion that governed recent appointments. It also shifts from the usual practice of appointing PSU chiefs until superannuation at 60. Under the new framework, a chairman can continue past 60 on a contract.
The government made a similar exception when it appointed Singh in 2022. A search committee picked him two months before he turned 60, making him the first executive of that age to chair a blue-chip state-run company. Singh, who retired as Bharat Petroleum's chairman in October 2022, took charge of ONGC on December 6, 2022. Last year, the Centre gave him a rare one-year extension, letting him stay until December 2026, by which time he will be over 64.
The government had started searching for a regular chairman last year. PESB invited applications in April 2025, and more than a dozen candidates applied, including Oil India's chairman Ranjit Rath. No interviews were held, and the process ended without explanation.
ONGC went without a full-time chief from April 2021 to December 2022, run by three interim chairmen before Singh's appointment.