Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy (in pic) may pursue his questions on ‘poor governance’ at the company and take up the issue with chairman Nandan Nilekani, sources close to Murthy said.

It appears that he will keep the flag of rebellion flying because the issues that he has raised have not been addressed.

This means that the internecine sniping that was going on at Infosys may well continue, for Murthy will not accept the status quo.

“I spoke to Murthy, he has gone abroad yesterday. He said he would come back and talk to Nandan. He said he is not going to keep quiet,” said an ex-Infosys official, who is on the same page with Murthy on the issues raised by him.

The Bangalore-headquartered company on Tuesday absolved itself of any wrongdoing vis-a-vis the Panaya deal, as well as severance pay to its former chief financial officer, in what is seen as a snub to Murthy.

Another former official of Infosys, on condition of anonymity, said the board was anyways not expected to ‘publicly admit to wrongdoing.’
“If the board comes out and says they have done something wrong, there will be class-action lawsuit on the company; so they have to say nothing wrong to protect the company,” the official add­ed. In other words, the clean chit given to the company is being seen as some kind of a balancing act by Nilekani to ‘protect’ the company, the official added.

He said when former CFO Rajiv Bansal’s severance pay issue was raised, the company ‘sto­p­p­ed payment’ and also clai­med that ‘almost all members of the M&A team were told to go’ when questions were asked about the Panaya deal.

He added that Infosys replaced Rupa Kudva as chairperson of the audit committee with independent director D Sundaram. “They have taken some internal action, but they can’t publicly admit there was a mistake,” the official claimed.

Murthy on Tuesday expr­essed disappointment that none of the questions raised by him on ‘poor governance’ had been answered by the company’s board with transparency. His comments ca­me after the Infosys board under chairman Nilekani gave a clean chit to the company’s $200 million Panaya acquisition. The board also refused to put out additional details of the probe as had been demanded by Murthy.

The Infosys co-fo­under said he stood by every question on ‘poor governance’ ra­ised in his speech dated August 29, to Infosys investors.

He asserted that the core question still remained on “how and why the Infosys board approved an unusual and unprecedented severance payment pact of 1,000 per cent (of the standard Infosys employment contracts) to the former CFO...”