New Delhi: As Tata Sons chairman, N Chandrasekaran chairs the board of several group companies. But his appointment as Air India chairman, which was made public on Monday, is somewhat different. As chairman, he will steer the operation of the recently acquired airline until a chief executive is found, according to people in the know.
In a rare development, Chandra, as he’s popularly known, is likely to be named ‘accountable manager’ of Air India. Accountable manager has corporate authority for ensuring that all tasks of the airline are financed and carried out to the standard required by the stipulated law. Typically, an airline CEO is assigned that role. In that sense, Chandra would be the hands-on interim head of the airline till a suitable CEO is hired, sources said.
This follows a failed attempt by the Tata Group last month to appoint a CEO of Air India—within a fortnight of the announcement that former Turkish airline chief Ilker Ayci would head the airline, he declined the offer in the midst of a row over his links to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Sources said that the government and aviation regulator DGCA had asked the new owners of Air India to appoint a position holder as accountable manager. The airline is currently being operated by a five-member committee.
It includes Nippun Aggarwal, a senior vice president of Tata Sons and four functional directors of the company.
“Both the government and the regulator wanted a senior level executive like a CEO or Chief Operating Officer (COO) to become accountable manager of the company,’’ said a person aware of the development. With Chandra being at the helm, the group would be able to send a message of confidence to the employees of Air India as well, he pointed out.
A Tata Sons spokesperson confirmed the appointment of Chandrasekaran as chairman of Air India. This will be the first time that Chandrasekaran will be heading a board of the group’s aviation ventures, in a sign of the growing importance of the sector for Tatas. Chandrasekaran is not part of the board of Tata’s other two airlines- Vistara and AirAsia India.
Sanjiv Mehta, CMD of FMCG giant Hindustan Unilver and Alice Vaidyan, former chairman and managing director of General Insurance Corporation of India, have been appointed non-executive independent directors.
15/03/22 Arindam Majumder/Business Standard
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