The Standing Committee on Finance has flagged the “crippling” 43% vacancy in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), and recommended setting up a task-force to ensure the early filling of all 38 vacant positions.
The ministry in its reply said there is no proposal at present to reduce Government of India stake below 51 per cent in CPSEs except in those cases wherein strategic disinvestment is being pursued as per the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).
The Standing Committee, in its report tabled in Parliament in March, had noted that maintaining only 51 officers against a sanctioned strength of 89 – with critical shortages at the Director (11 vacancies) and Under Secretary (8 vacancies) levels – “severely jeopardises” the department’s ability to execute complex transactions like the IDBI Bank sale or finalise CPSE MoUs. The Committee, in its Action Taken report, however, said that it considers this reactive stance “insufficient for complex, modern capital markets”, and re-emphasised the need to establish benchmarked governance standards by proactively codifying a legal architecture to permanently safeguard the government’s strategic oversight and national security interests in vital CPSEs whenever public equity dilution below 51 per cent occurs in the future. The Committee recommend that the forthcoming roadmap rigorously integrate a standardised, independent expert-led valuation framework to ensure that market volatility does not result in the undervaluation or distress sale of strategic national real estate assets.
