The council includes five of the six directors who had earlier tendered their resignation from the Reliance Energy board.

"The idea behind the council is to harness the diverse skills and capabilities available across different functions in the organisation. The council will work as an open, evolving forum, which will provide a continuity of leadership and strengthen organisation learning. The establishment of the council will bring Reliance Energy in line with the best international corporate practices," a company release said:

The eight members of the council are R K Aggarwal, CEO, Delhi distribution companies; Lalit Jalan, head, Mumbai distribution business; Subodh shah, head, regulatory affairs and the five directors who had earlier resigned – J P Chalasani, whole time director (business development); SC Gupta whole time director (operations); K H Mankad, whole time director (finance); and Amitabh Jhunjhunwala, director and RIL representative on the board.

The Reliance 'ownership issue'

The six directors including Prof J Ramachandran had resigned from the board of REL in the last week of November.

After a marathon board meeting at Reliance Centre in south Mumbai on November 30, the REL board requested "the six directors to reconsider their resignation."

The board decided that the six directors will continue to function normally, as before, the release added.

Reliance Energy, a Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprise company and a member of the Reliance group, is a private utility group with aggregate estimated revenues of Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion) and total assets of Rs 9,800 crore (Rs 98 billion).

It distributes nearly 1,600 million units of power to over 25 million consumers in Mumbai, Delhi, Orissa and Goa, across an area covering 1,24,300 sq km.

Reliance Energy generates 941 MW of power, through its power plants located in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Goa.