AIBEA calls on Finance Minister to fill vacant Director positions in PSBs

The All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) has urged Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to personally intervene and expedite the filling of vacant director positions in the 12 Public Sector Banks (PSBs).

In a letter to the Finance Minister, AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam highlighted that 60 director posts remain unfilled out of the total 186 director posts in 12 PSBs.

In particular, the letter conveyed deep resentment amongst bank employees and officers about the non-filling up of employee directors/officer directors for the past ten years. 

All 12 posts of Workmen Employee Director and 12 posts of Officer Employee Director have been vacant for the last ten years. This clearly shows that the Government does not want representatives of the recognized majority unions on the Boards of the Banks, even though it is mandatory in terms of the Act.

“You will surely agree that this cannot be appreciated from the point of view of good governance”, Venkatachalam said.

For the effective and democratic functioning of the Boards of the Public Sector Banks, all the posts of Directors on the Board of Directors in the Banks are to be filled in as provided in the State Bank of India Act, 1955 and Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1970/80 and in terms of the Scheme thereunder.

The Act and the Scheme provide for representation of various interests, such as Depositors, Shareholders, farmers from agriculture sector, persons from MSME/small-scale industries, banking experts, chartered accountants, economists, legal experts, experts in co-operation, experts in finance, workers, artisans, etc.

“But we find that many posts of Directors in the Public Sector Banks remain unfilled and hence remain vacant thus severely and seriously jeopardizing the meaningful functioning of the Boards of the Banks and defeating the basic purpose for which these posts of Directors were meant for”, Venkatachalam said.

Even where Directors representing shareholders are appointed, they are mostly former Executives of Banks and Insurance companies and not by ordinary shareholders for whom the post is otherwise meant for, he added.

In four Public Sector Banks, (Bank of Baroda, Bank of Maharashtra, Central Bank of India, and Indian Bank), even the post of non-Executive Chairman is vacant and unfilled. The present Government created those posts by splitting the combined post of CMD.

At present there are 186 director posts in the Boards of the 12 public sector banks, but only 126 directors are presently appointed, and the remaining 60 director posts (32 per cent) remain vacant, as the AIBEA letter highlighted.