Varadarajan appointed Hindu Editor,N Ravi,Parthasarathy put in papers

Seven board members voted in favour of the resolution and five against it.

N Murali,Senior Managing Director of the company,announced that he would retire on August 11 when he turns 65. He pointed out at the meeting that if his eldest brother N Ram,the current Editor-in-Chief of the group,had stood by his commitment made on September 25,2009,he should have retired on May 4,2010.

Ravi,Parthasarathy and Lakshman resigned saying it was not possible for them to continue after the appointment of an Editor who was not only far too junior to them but also appointed in an “unseemly hurry” without following any selection procedure,prior consultation or evaluation.

In his resignation letter,Ravi said Varadarajan’s name was announced the first time at a board meeting and passed without any discussion within a few minutes. “In other words,the start of the so- called professionalisation process has itself been carried out in a wholly arbitrary,non-professional way,” he wrote.

The board,whose members are part of the extended family of founder Kasturi Ranga Iyengar,has been involved in a long and intense fight for editorial control of the publications owned by the company. In April this year,a majority of the board members had supported a proposal that all editorial directors belonging to the family must step down in favour of a professional editor who could appoint his own team and independently run the publications while the family members constitute an editorial board to advise these professionals from outside.

A faction of the board opposed the move alleging that in the guise of professionalising the editorial functions,the proposal meant to block the chances of any family member getting the editorial control after Ram stepped down as the Editor-in-Chief. This faction led by Ram’s brothers Murali and Ravi moved the Company Law Board (CLB) in Chennai,which stayed the appointment of Varadarajan and decided to hear the case in August. The faction led by Ram challenged the CLB order in Madras High Court which overturned the CLB stay order. Ram’s opponents challenged this in the Supreme Court,which refused to interfere in the case and asked the CLB to hasten the process of hearing in the case without being influenced by the HC.

“The CLB will begin hearing the case on August 8 and it will finally decide whether the resolution passed in the board meeting today will prevail or not,” said Ravi.