Last week, when the board of Jindal Drilling & Industries Ltd (JDIL), part of the Jindal Group, terminated the services of Managing Director Naresh Kumar, he called the decision “illegal and prompted by motivated reasons”. JDIL, without citing any reason in a notification to stock exchanges, said its board has lost confidence in Kumar and has withdrawn all powers and authority granted to him or being exercised by him.
But Kumar, who is also a member of the Jindal family, isn’t taking his abrupt removal lying down and plans to sue the promoters of the company, where he served as MD since 1991. Industry sources say differences between Kumar and the Jindals surfaced a year ago when Kumar helped son Manav Kumar establish Discovery Enterprises on the same lines as JDIL. Some say the bagging of an ONGC contract by Discovery was the final nail in the coffin of the relationship.
JDIL was recently listed among Asia’s top 200 under-a-billion companies by Forbes and had a turnover of Rs 1,195 crore in FY10. Kumar serves as chairman of the oil & gas services division at CII and is on its national council of hydrocarbon. He is also president of the Petrotech Society, a non-profit entity that organises one of Asia’s largest biennial oil & gas conferences.