As many as 14 chairmen in 18 public sector undertaking banks are set to retire or see their term expire in the next two years.

Also, none of the present executive directors who are set to take over as chairmen in some of the banks have only five years of service left. The tenure for a chairman of a public sector bank is five years.

Two bank chairmen are set to retire in December 2003, three will retire by October 2004 and as many as nine will vacate their office by September 2005.

Three chairmen will leave their present posts by November 2006. Out of the 19 banks half as many of the present chairmen will not be able to serve any bank for their full tenure of five years.

As many as five executive directors from all these banks at present will not be eligible for chairmen's post because they do not have the mandatory two years residual service left.

But by the time most of the chairmen retires only three executive directors will have more than two years of mandatory service left.

Sources close to the development said that the panel for executive directors for which interviews were conducted in April has recently been dismantled and the process will have to be initiated afresh taking a number of months.

Allahabad Bank and Andhra Bank are already headless with B Samal and B Vasanthan retiring some time back. Dena Bank chairman A G Joshi will retire in December.

The chairmen of United Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, and Canara Bank will turn headless in February, August and October 2004, respectively.

In 2005 chairmen of Bank of Baroda P S Shenoy, Punjab National Bank's S S Kohli, Union Bank's V Leeladhar, OBC's B D Narang, Bank of India's M Nevugopalan, Indian Bank's Ranjana Kumar, Central Bank of India's Dalbir Singh, Bank of Maharashtra's S C Basu, and Punjab & Sindh Bank's N S Gujaral are set to retire by September.

Banking sources said in an era of intense competition change in guard at a bank would act as an impediment to the organisation in the long-term as well as medium-term growth.