It spent Rs 36,915 crore to acquire a majority equity stake in the company. But to get its sole nominee director appointed on the board of HPCL, ONGC has to toil through paperwork.

For over five months now, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has had no representative on the board of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd - a company in which it owns a 51.11 per cent stake since January 2018. HPCL, under its new chairman Pushp Kumar Joshi, is however trying to resolve the situation, top officials said.

HPCL for over one-and-a-half years - between January 2018 and August 2019 - did not recognise ONGC as its promoter despite the government selling its entire 51.11 per cent stake in the company to the oil explorer. It relented only after a rap from market regulator SEBI. ONGC got the right to appoint one director who HPCL called ‘Government Nominee Director (Representative of ONGC)’.

Officials said since then ONGC appointed one of its directors as the nominee director. Its last nominee director was Alka Mittal, Director (HR) who was appointed to the HPCL board in April 2021.

In January this year, Mittal was given additional charge of chairman and managing director of ONGC after the retirement of the incumbent.

And following the past practice of the company that chairman could only sit on the board of a subsidiary in the capacity as chairman and not as a director, Mittal resigned from the board of HPCL and another director was nominated.

HPCL promptly took note of it. In a stock exchange filing on January 6, 2022, HPCL said: "Alka Mittal has tendered resignation from the position of the Government Nominee Director (Representative of ONGC) of the company effective January 05, 2022."

Officials said as per rules, Mittal also sent her resignation from the HPCL board to the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas - the parent ministry of ONGC and HPCL.

 The ministry however rejected the resignation and asked Mittal to continue on the HPCL board for "strategic reasons", they said.