New Delhi, March 3 (PTI): The government has pushed back the Rs 11,500-crore share sale of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to the next fiscal year.

The follow-on public offering (FPO) is now slated to open on April 5, a senior official said today. The FPO was scheduled to open on March 15.

“The rescheduling is partly because of the delay in the appointment of independent directors on the ONGC board to fulfil Sebi’s listing requirement,” he said.

According to the new schedule, the FPO will open on April 5 and close on April 8.

The government is selling its 5 per cent stake, or 427.77 million equity shares, in the FPO, which at today’s closing price of Rs 269.85 on the Bombay Stock Exchange will fetch over Rs 11,540 crore.

After the offer, the government’s stake in ONGC will come down to 69.14 per cent from 74.14 per cent.

Road shows, which were to be held in India and abroad from March 2-9 to promote the share sale, will now begin on March 21.

The official said ONGC was ready with its red-herring prospectus but is awaiting the appointment of at least one independent director on its board. ONGC has six functional directors besides the chairman. It also has two government nominee directors taking the total strength of functional or promoter directors to nine.

Against this, the company, at present, has four independent directors and needs five more to meet Sebi’s listing norm of having equal number of executive and non-executive directors.

However, since the state-run firm is without a permanent chairman and the vacancy of the director for human resources has not been filled, the effective strength of full-time functional directors together with government-nominee directors is down to seven.

To meet the Sebi norm, three independent directors need to be appointed, which is not possible given the timeline. So, the government plans to withdraw its two nominee directors, bringing down the strength of functional directors to five.

The file pertaining to the appointment of one independent director is with the cabinet committee on appointments and once that is cleared, ONGC will meet the norm, the officer said.

Last month, ONGC received the report of independent auditors who certified the company’s oil and gas reserves, a mandatory requirement for explorers making public offers.