In the Eye of Storm, Chitra Ramkrishna Quits RIL BP Mobility Board

Moneylife Digital Team 22 February 2022

Investor Interest

Chitra Ramkrishna, the former chief executive officer & managing director (CEO & MD) of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) has resigned from the board of Reliance BP Mobility. The resignation came into effect from 19th February, eight days after an order of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), according to media reports.

She held only one directorship after stepping down from the NSE in December 2016.

She was appointed an independent director on the board of Reliance BP Mobility, part of Reliance Industries, in September 2020. She had resigned from all other boards — eight others — following the investigation launched into the co-location (Colo) scam.

The much-celebrated Ramakrishna has been in the news in recent weeks for serious governance failures at the NSE during her tenure. It is understood that after the 11th February SEBI order, Chitra had to resign from Reliance BP Mobilty as an independent director.

The media report quotes a a spokesperson of RIL who said, “Ms Chitra Ramakrishna has tendered her resignation as a director on the Board of BP Mobility Limited on 19-02-2022, with immediate effect.”

What is more interesting, however, is that despite the massive murky scandal surrounding her, the sleazy details of a sordid affair leaking out and the ‘Himalayan Yogi’ news trolling her the world over, she waited till 19th February to resign from the directorship at Reliance BP Mobility.

In its 190-page order, SEBI has revealed about Ramkrishna sharing NSE's confidential information, including organisational structure, financial projections, business plans, agenda of the board meeting, and even ratings/performance appraisals of employees with an 'unknown person' - Chitra claimed that she was steered by a yogi dwelling in the Himalayan ranges in the appointment of Anand Subramanian as the Exchange's group operating officer (GOO) and advisor to MD, according to the SEBI order.

Further, Ms Ramkrishna gave 'frequent, arbitrary and disproportionate' increase in compensation to Mr Subramanian when there was no evidence of any performance evaluation being done for him and nor was there any evidence to satisfy the rating of ‘A’ given to him for giving such high increments.

Apart from this, Ms Ramkrishna had shared certain internal confidential information including financial and business plans of NSE, dividend scenario, financial results with the yogi and even consulted him over the performance appraisals of the Exchange's employees.

SEBI has penalised NSE, Ramkrishna, and her predecessor Ravi Narain for governance lapses in the hiring of Anand Subramanian. SEBI has also slapped a fine of Rs3 crore on Ramkrishna, Rs2 crore each on NSE, Subramanian, Narain, and Rs 6 lakh on VR Narasimhan, who was the chief regulatory officer and compliance officer.

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