Tata feud: Govt asks trustees to follow the ‘Tata way’ after meeting with Amit Shah

The government has stepped in to find a resolution to the rift in Tata Trusts, with Chairman Noel Tata and Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday evening. Tata Trusts Vice Chairman Venu Srinivasan and Trustee Darius Khambata were also present.

While no details were available on what transpired at the meeting at the time of going to press, sources familiar with the developments said the attempts of four dissenting trustees of Tata Trusts to undermine the Tata Trusts chairman’s authority and assume greater powers in the running of Tata Sons have not gone down well with the government.

According to sources, the government believes the dissenting trustees should follow the established “Tata way” that relies on decades of consensual decisions, and wants to prevent any adverse fallout of the rift between the two factions on the operations of Tata Sons.

The government expects a speedy resolution

The governance crisis shouldn’t be allowed to snowball into something bigger, the sources said, adding the government expects a speedy resolution of the dispute. Public charitable trusts under the Tata Trusts umbrella control Tata Sons, the holding company of the $180-billion group. 

A meeting of Tata Trusts is scheduled for October 10. The four dissenting trustees — Mehli Mistry, Jehangir HC Jehangir, Darius Khambata and Pramit Jhaveri — are believed to be looking for a greater say in the running of Tata Sons including approving the minutes of the board meetings. The Mistry camp has reportedly alleged that it is not being provided with adequate information by the directors on the Tata Sons board who have been nominated by Tata Trusts.

Potential nominees

Also, among the issues in the ongoing tussle is the nomination of new directors to the board of Tata Sons. Media reports say that the Mistry-led camp has reportedly rejected all three candidates proposed by Noel Tata for the Tata Sons board. They include well-known lawyer Behram Vakil, Tata Steel MD TV Narendran and veteran banker Uday Kotak.

The Tata Sons board currently has six members due to three recent vacancies: the retirement of Ralph Speth (ex-JLR chief), the expired term of industrialist Ajay Piramal, and the retirement of ex-UTI chief Leo Puri.