Less than a month after he took a tough stance against Union ministers appointing board members on public sector units under their charge with gay abandon, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided to relent.

The man who made him do this was none other than Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan, who has been in the news recently for forcing cellular operators back out in their battle with the wireless in local loop limited mobile players.

In August 2002, Mahajan had appointed four independent directors to the board of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, including 29-year-old former Delhi University Students Union chief, Monika Arora, ex-head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's economic cell, Jagdish Shettigar, Shiv Sena's ex-Rajya Sabha MP, Adhik Shirodkar, and Ashwin Vyas, a medical representative by profession and president of BJP Mumbai's northeastern cell.

Since PSU directors are mostly well-recognised professionals -- NTPC, for instance, has R K Pachauri of the Tata Energy Research Institute and Deepak Parekh of HDFC as its independent directors -- the move raised a howl of protests.

While the appointment of the four directors was not regularised by the government for several months, in December 2002, the prime minister sent a letter to his Cabinet colleagues, asking them not to appoint directors unless they were cleared by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet.

This was followed by another letter asking ministers not just to appoint acting chiefs for PSUs they were in charge of, but also insisting on the Public Enterprise Selection Board selecting candidates.

For instance, in state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Prithipal Singh is just an acting chief, appointed to the job on an ad hoc basis by the telecommunications ministry.