Days after removing Rajni Kant Agrawal as Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS) Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD), the Centre Saturday appointed a 2006-batch IAS officer Shilpa Sachin Shinde to the post.
An order was issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), stating that the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) has appointed Shinde, a UT-cadre IAS officer, as the CMD of WAPCOS for five years.
So far, the CMD of WAPCOS was selected by the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB), and then approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC). However, the Jal Shakti Ministry is learnt to have moved a proposal of appointment of the WAPCOS CMD by the ACC directly.
On September 3, Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil invoked his special powers to “divest” charge of the CMD from Agrawal, who was appointed on October 1, 2021 for 5 years, and Pankaj Kapoor, Director (Finance), WAPCOS was given additional charge. Agrawal’s term was up to October next year. Kapoor, the senior-most director in the WAPCOS, who took charge on September 3 is superannuating on September 28.
The decision to remove Agrawal is learnt to have been taken by Patil following complaints of alleged irregularities in the functioning of the WAPCOS, including alleged non-payment of perks and allowances to employees, delay in implementation of key government projects, and delayed payments to vendors and contractors.
Most of the issues of alleged mismanagement were related to construction projects taken up by the WAPCOS in recent years, said a source. The source said that the WAPCOS was essentially a consultancy company but over the years “unplanned and unexplained uni-directional diversification has led to a strange situation where almost 75% of the company’s order book is being covered by construction and not consultancy whereas the latter is its core strength and area of business…”
There has also been alleged undue delay in payment of GST by the WAPCOS leading to interest and penalty liabilities, said the source, adding that payment to suppliers was “random and erratic with no method or system in place”.
