It is for the third time in this year, government headhunter PESB has not found any of the applicants suitable for the top job at Oil India Ltd BSE 0.56 %, the nation’s second-biggest state-owned oil and gas explorer.

The Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) yesterday interviewed ten candidates, including the firm’s Director (Finance) Rupshikha Saikia Borah, to select a new Chairman and Managing Director of OIL.

After the interview, PESB in a notice said, “The Board decided to see more candidates.”

Besides Borah, PESB said it interviewed Indraprastha Gas Ltd Managing Director Narendra Kumar, FACT Chairman Jaiveer Srivastava, GAIL Executive Director Gajendra Singh, PGCIL Director (Personnel) R P Singh and five others.

PESB had in November last year found Borah and five others, including Neyveli Lignite Corp Ltd Director (HR) S K Acharya, Air India Director (Personnel) N K Jain and

State Trading Corp Director (Marketing) Rajiv Chopra unsuitable to replace S K Srivastava when he retired on June 30, 2015.

It, however, selected Borah when it conducted a second round of interviews in February. This lead to Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) asking what had changed between November and February that Borah became suitable from unsuitable.

Following this, the selections were scrapped and fresh applications were called.

Borah, a chartered accountant and an alumnus of the Delhi School of Economics, is the wife of N M Borah who was the Chairman and Managing Director of OIL till May, 2012.

Srivastava took over as the head of OIL from Borah.

Sources said for the current round, 12 candidates had applied, with none of them having an oil and gas exploration background.

After Srivastava retired on June 30, the Oil Ministry named senior bureaucrat U P Singh as the acting Chairman and Managing Director of OIL

Singh, who is Additional Secretary (Exploration) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, will continue to hold the responsibility till further orders, the sources said.

OIL has five full-time board members, including the chairman and managing director. None of the other three directors applied.

Director (Exploration) S Mahapatra superannuates on March 31, 2017 and did not have the requisite two years of service left for being considered.

The firm’s Director (HR) Biswajit Roy was appointed to the board in May this year while Director (Operations) P K Sharma came over a month later.

Sources said after the PESB recommendation, the government can invite fresh applications under the current rule or go in for a repeat of Coal India Ltd (CIL) type of recruitment.