Khattar gets full charge at MUL

With this, Maruti8217;s second managing director Khattar will now get full charge of running the company under the accord on June 7 last year, Khattar became second MD last fortnight, and was to get full charge on January 1, 2000. Bhaskarudu who was to finish his tenure as Maruti8217;s managing director at the end of the year will now get a three-year tenure at PESB, and will have a rank equal to a secretary to the governmentof India. The government decided to advance Khattar8217;s succession date since it was found that, despite the accord, things were still not running too smoothly at Maruti 8212; while Maruti8217;s competitors were quickly off the mark and deciding on new models and marketing strategies in a jiffy, the sharp division in Maruti resulted in most decisions taking place at a snail8217;s pace. As a result, Maruti has been losing market share to new entrants such as Hyundai, Daewoo.

If the bitter acrimony for over a year before the peace accord ensured Maruti could not decide on introducing new models and new engines, the fact that Bhaskarudu didn8217;t see eye to eye with Khattar ensured that these critical decisions took ages to clear even afterwards. This, in fact, was one of the reasons that when the Supreme Court came up with stringent emission norms in May, the technological laggard Maruti was caught napping and its car couldn8217;t meet the new Euro-I standards.