In a pre-emptive move, Harpal Dugal and Suren Khirwadkar, managing partners of Optimus, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Polaris, have resigned from its board. The board meeting of Optimus is scheduled for tomorrow, a day before that of Polaris.
Both Dugal and Khirwadkar are understood to have sent in their resignation by e-mail. They have initiated legal action against Polaris for failing to meet financial and equity commitments they say were promised to them when they joined Arun Jain, chairman and CEO of Polaris, on his BPO initiative.
The resignations are not expected to have any impact on the ongoing court cases that the duo have initiated against Polaris.
"This letter is being sent without prejudice to the contentions I have raised/proposed to raise in the various legal proceedings pending/proposed to be initiated," was the last line in both the e-mails. With this, Jain, Govind Singhal and N Vaidyanathan remain on the board of Optimus.
Polaris is also involved in legal proceedings against Bank Artha Graha of Indonesia. Jain was detained illegally in Jakarta on complaints by the bank, and it needed the Centre's intervention to bring him back.
Dugal and Khirwadkar had joined Polaris in April 2002. Dugal was the former CEO of Standard Chartered Bank and Khirwadkar the former country marketing director at Citibank. Polaris also signed Nat Naraya- naswamy, another corporate honcho from Accenture, USA.
Dugal and Khirwadkar were in charge of Polaris' BPO operations. Narayana- swamy was director of Polaris Retail Infotech and senior vice-president, strategic alliances, directly reporting to Jain. Narayanaswamy later quit, upset that a promised board level position had not materialised.
Industry sources explained that Dugal and Khirwadkar were distressed at not getting equity stake of around 5 per cent each and an additional 2 per cent on any big buyout. They have signed on leading lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani to fight their case.
