ONGC CMD Race: ONGC Group Experience Could Certainly Carry More Weight
Dr. Ranjit Rath Faces the Bigger Question: Can Oil India Experience Match ONGC’s Scale and Complexity?
The race for the Chairman and Managing Director of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has seven contenders, but the presence of four candidates from the ONGC Group makes the contest particularly interesting.
Ranjit Rath enters the race as the sitting CMD of Oil India Limited. But his current position alone does not establish an advantage over candidates with extensive experience within the ONGC Group.
This distinction matters because, although ONGC and Oil India are both upstream oil and gas companies, they operate at very different scales. ONGC is a vast organisation with a much larger operational footprint, asset base and organisational complexity.
That could make direct experience within the ONGC ecosystem an important consideration for the selection committee.
Four candidates with ONGC Group experience
The ONGC Group candidates are Rajarshi Gupta, MD of ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL); Vikram Saxena, Director (Technology & Field Services), ONGC; Satyam Kumar, Director (Strategy & Corporate Affairs), ONGC; and Dulal Halder, Director (Operations), OVL.
Their profiles cover different parts of the business.
Gupta brings experience across ONGC and OVL, including international operations, business development and corporate strategy. As OVL’s MD, he currently heads ONGC’s international E&P arm.
Saxena brings extensive experience in ONGC’s core exploration and production activities. His current responsibility for Technology & Field Services places him close to the technical and operational engine of the company.
Kumar represents the strategic and corporate side of ONGC, with his current portfolio covering Strategy & Corporate Affairs.
Halder brings operational experience from OVL and its international E&P business.
Together, the four represent a substantial pool of institutional knowledge about ONGC and its wider group.
Why ONGC experience matters
The next ONGC CMD will have to manage much more than a conventional upstream operation.
The company has a huge domestic E&P portfolio, offshore and onshore assets, drilling and field-service operations, major technology requirements, large capital expenditure programmes and an international business through OVL.
Understanding how this complex ecosystem works can be a significant advantage.
An executive who has spent years inside ONGC or its principal international arm already knows the organisation’s systems, operational challenges and institutional environment.
That does not automatically make an internal candidate the best candidate. But it does mean that ONGC Group experience deserves to be assessed on its substance rather than being treated simply as internal experience.
Gupta and Saxena particularly interesting
Among the internal candidates, Rajarshi Gupta and Vikram Saxena present two particularly strong but very different profiles.
Gupta offers breadth — experience across ONGC, OVL, international E&P and corporate strategy.
Saxena offers depth — decades of experience in ONGC’s E&P and operational functions.
The choice between such profiles could ultimately depend on what the selection committee considers most important for ONGC’s next phase: broader strategic and international exposure or deep technical and operational experience.
Kumar and Halder add further depth to the internal pool, particularly in strategy and international operations.
Rath’s candidature remains relevant – but designation is not enough
Rath’s experience as Oil India CMD is clearly relevant and cannot be discounted.
However, being the sitting CMD of another PSU should not by itself establish an advantage in the ONGC race.
The more important question is how effectively a candidate’s experience translates to the scale and complexity of ONGC.
That puts the ONGC Group candidates in an interesting position. They may not all carry the designation of CMD, but several have spent substantial parts of their careers working within the organisation and its international arm.
The final decision will rest with the Search-Cum-Selection Committee. But given the profiles in the seven-member field, ONGC Group experience could certainly carry more weight than the current designation of a candidate might suggest.
Editor’s Note:
At the time when ONGC is undergoing one of the biggest transformation or metamorphosis into deep water exploration under the Samudra Manthan Scheme, the directors working directly under the leadership of present Chairman Arun Kumar Singh would definitely have better experience in the changing work atmosphere rather than an outside who suddenly para-troops into the system. Moreover, Dr. Ranjit Rath, who hails from Odisha, is said to be the prodigee of a former minister, who is now not in Modi cabinet.
