NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya's proposal to unbundle Coal India (CIL) has created unnecessary and avoidable uncertainties in the minds of top PSU executives who believe that though Panagariya's recommendation contradicts the government's stated goal of creating consolidated mega PSUs, it may be indicative of a new thinking in the Aayog. Last week, Pangariya told media that CIL be "unbundled" to allow competition. To put it straight, he is asking for spinning off of seven mining subsidiaries into separate corporate entities and doing away with the listed holding company CIL. If his proposal gets implemented, other PSUs like SAIL, too, may feel the heat. It may be pointed out that Panagariya's loud thinking is nothing but a reflection of the accumulated confusion of 60 years in the government over how to run PSUs. Over the previous six decades, various governments and their 'wise' officers have bundled and unbundled PSUs to prove their intelligence level to the poor taxpayers. And the situation has only turned from bad to worse. However, Pangariya can't be blamed for his wave of thinking. The proposal was mooted by none other than the UPA 2 and vetted by its 'great' PM, Dr Manmohan Singh. "Have seen this suggestion of breaking Coal India pop up at regular intervals of 4 to 5 years over the last 25 years," former chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya, who led the company during the mega IPO in 2010, said in a public post on Facebook. "CIL today is the only Indian company that rightfully claims to be the largest in the world as a coal mining company. The largest companies in other sectors such as oil & gas, power, steel etc., are not big enough to lay claim on being the global top shot. The government should seriously reconsider the proposal," he said. Bhattacharyya felt the successive governments treated CIL - that bounced back from the verge of sickness in the 1990s - merely as "a provider of financial resources to meet fiscal deficits". Enforcing dividend payout ratio substantially in excess of 100%, levying Rs. 400 a ton carbon tax, and "diverting (CIL) resources to unrelated purposes like the revival of fertilizer units are measures that possibly does not take into cognizance the best interest of the company", Bhattacharyya pointed out. Incidentally, while the Modi government raised carbon tax on coal four-fold, it spared a potentially more polluting petroleum coke from the ambit of such taxes, creating market imbalance and replacement of coal by pet-coke in captive electricity generation. Such decisions come over and above the government's failure in ensuring strong governance in coal companies. NC Jha, who led the company for nearly a year after Bhattacharyya's exit soon after the IPO, has reportedly pointed out that to ensure competition, the policymakers must allow the company to be run freely. Having worked for the consolidation of Coal India, it pains to hear the unbundling theory, he said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, at least two analysts from top global agencies didn't find any merit in the proposal either.