After much deliberation, anticipation and speculation, Raghu Menon, the special secretary and financial advisor in the civil aviation ministry, has been appointed the chairman and managing director of Air India.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the 1974 batch IAS officer?s name, after an intense race for the top job in the National Aviation Company of India Limited (Nacil), which runs the merged national carrier. Menon takes over from V Thulasidas, a Tripura cadre IAS officer who retires on March 31.

The race for the job saw a total 51 applications which then reduced to 16 and eventually just nine. The choice for the job was a tough one, as a source puts it ?hectic meetings were on throughout the day on Wednesday, before Menon’s name was finalised.?

With the selection of Menon, the future of favourite contender and currently joint managing director of the carrier, Vishwapati Trivedi, is still unclear. Trivedi?s tenure as JMD also comes to an end the same day as the current CMD V Thulasidas, who retires from government service in March.

The government sources said Trivedi would most probably be shifted to another PSU. Sources in the ministry of civil aviation said Menon?s name comes as a complete surprise as most of the other contenders had one or more lobbies working within the UPA government for them.

The race for the top job at Air India also included the airline’s current Joint MD Vishwapati Trivedi, besides Arvind Mayaram of the Department of Economic Affairs and Arvind Jadhav, chief vigilance officer of the Gas Authority of India Limited.

Names of several secretary and additional secretary-level officials had been doing the rounds for the past several weeks for the Air India top job.

Speculation is rife that Thulasidas could be given an extension of three months as the non-executive chairman of the national carrier. Interestingly, sources said a panel consisting six odd names, was constituted and rubbished before these four names were zeroed in from another panel. Lobbying and political backing for these candidates had been hectic.