PESB Recommends Pushpam Kumar For Director (Personnel), RINL

The Public Enterprises Selection Board has recommended Pushpam Kumar, Senior General Manager at the India Trade Promotion Organisation, for appointment as Director (Personnel) of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the Visakhapatnam-based steel public sector undertaking.

Director (Personnel) at RINL is a board-level post responsible for human resources, industrial relations and welfare across the company's Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, which employs several thousand workers and has a long history of trade union activity. The role also oversees recruitment and manpower planning at a company that has repeatedly negotiated voluntary retirement schemes in recent years.

Kumar currently serves as Senior General Manager at ITPO, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry body that organises the India International Trade Fair and manages trade promotion infrastructure including Pragati Maidan. His career has spanned commercial and administrative functions in central public sector enterprises, giving him exposure to large-scale personnel management outside the steel sector before this recommendation.

At ITPO, Kumar's responsibilities have centred on organisational administration for an agency that runs India's largest annual trade exhibition and manages exhibition real estate in the capital, a role distinct from shop-floor industrial relations work.

The recommendation comes as RINL continues to work through a prolonged financial turnaround plan following years of losses tied to the absence of captive iron ore linkage, a structural disadvantage compared to other integrated steel producers. Filling the Director (Personnel) vacancy is part of completing the company's board strength as the Ministry of Steel pushes forward with revival measures.

RINL's workforce reduction and restructuring efforts have made the personnel function especially sensitive in recent years, with VRS negotiations and industrial relations management central to the company's cost-cutting drive. Whoever takes over will inherit a workforce still adjusting to a leaner operating structure.

PESB recommendations require clearance from the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet before taking effect; Kumar's appointment to RINL's board has not yet been formally notified.