Govt sets free its directors on Satyam board

The government-appointed directors on the board of fraud-mauled Satyam Computer Services, recently renamed Mahindra Satyam, may get full flexibility to decide whether or not they should stay on in their assignments.

The government-appointed directors on the board of fraud-mauled Satyam Computer Services, recently renamed Mahindra Satyam, may get full flexibility to decide whether or not they should stay on in their assignments.

HT Image

However, the directors will need to get officially inducted into the board by the new management led by the Mahindra group after it recently took control of the Hyderabad-based company subject to their own willingness to stay on and seek an extension of the tenure that started when the Centre moved in to stem the rot in the firm hit by the country’s biggest corporate fraud yet.

Earlier, the ministry of corporate affairs had said it would phase out the government- appointed directors from the board of the scam-hit IT firm.

“We are in the stage of phasing them out but it would be based on the recommendations of the directors appointed by the government. They are very capable and qualified and they would decide how to go about it or in case there is any need for them to stay on but if they have do, they would cease to be government-appointed directors,” said Salman Khurshid, corporate affairs minister.

The Company Law Board replaced the directors of the then Satyam after its founder B Ramalinga Raju confessed to doctoring it records by appointing six directors in January on the request of the government.

The six government-nominated directors included Kiran Karnik, Deepak Parekh, Tarun Das, C Achutan, Suryakant B Mainak, and TN Manoharan.