Mumbai: The governance fight inside Tata Sons has become a political one. Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman traded barbs on Wednesday over the board's decision to give executive chairman N Chandrasekaran a third five-year term.
Gandhi said on X that Tata was being "criminally destroyed" and that no business leader had spoken up. "Indian business is not Modi and Shah's plaything. You lack courage. We don't," he wrote. Sitharaman asked whether he was trying to incite business leaders and told him to stop seeing ghosts everywhere, accusing the Congress of spreading distrust towards Indian industry.
The dispute turns on the Tata Sons board meeting of September 17, which approved Chandrasekaran's reappointment from February 21, 2027. Tata Trusts holds about 66% of Tata Sons and has two nominee directors on the board, Noel Tata and Venu Srinivasan.
In a nine-page letter dated October 26 to company secretary Suprakash Mukhopadhyay, Noel Tata called the resolution void. His case: the reappointment was not on the agenda, which listed only a debriefing from the Nomination and Remuneration Committee; no Selection Committee was constituted under Article 118; and Article 121 required the affirmative vote of the Trusts' nominee directors, which he withheld.
Tata Sons has stood by the resolution. In a September 24 letter it said the board approved the reappointment by a majority and that the special procedure Noel Tata cites does not apply. It has relied on legal opinions from former Chief Justice of India U U Lalit and former Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna.
Noel Tata has asked for the audio and video recording of the meeting, the final minutes, voting details and the disclosures of interest filed under Section 184(1) of the Companies Act. He has also sought details of dealings between TVS Motor and Hanno One Warehousing, whose directors, the letter says, include Chandrasekaran's wife and son. Srinivasan is chairman emeritus of TVS Motor and voted in favour of the reappointment.
Neither side has gone to court. The Tata Sons board has recommended a dividend of ₹1,10,717 per share for FY26, a total payout of ₹4,478.58 crore, up 70.6% from a year earlier.
Noel Tata turns 70 on November 12 and will step down from the boards of Trent, Titan, Tata Steel, Voltas, Tata Investment Corporation and Tata International. He stays on the Tata Sons board as a Trusts nominee. He has also opposed a stock market listing of Tata Sons, which the board favours in line with RBI guidance for upper-layer core investment companies.