How does Tata Sons process investment proposals?

I was taken aback by this report in today's TOI:

Noel Tata, chairman of Tata Trusts, the controlling shareholder of Tata Sons, has called for greater scrutiny of large investments by the holdings company, requiring  management to present detailed business cases, setting out the rationale, expected financial returns and risks of capita commitments before directors sign off on them, said people familiar with the matter. 

Is this true? Were the proposals approved by the board last June without the required details being presented? 

Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran or some senior official of the Tata group needs to clarify. 

 

SIR, without love: are lack of additions the problem, not exclusions?

There is an outcry over the number of people whose names have been deleted from the electoral rolls. 

The number is said to be 13 crore across the country or about 12 per cent of the eligible voters. For the opposition, this has become a huge issue.

So I was surprised by the contents of an article by Jean Dreze in ET. Dreze is a liberal and no friend of the government.

Dreze argues that  the deletions are not the issue. The deletions happen  because of deaths, movement from one place to another, double counting etc. 

He  contends that the ground-level reports suggest that the majority of deletions are LEGITIMATE.

But then the numbers on the voter list fall short of the adult population by 15 per cent. How do we explain this? 

Dreze says that the problem is not exclusion but non-inclusion. About 10 per cent of the eligible voters had been left out in the  past. And the latest SIR exercise does little to remedy the non-inclusion.

By focusing on exclusion and not on inclusion, the EC has failed to ensure that all eligible  voters get a chance to exercise their franchise. 

The EC is seeking to remedy this. It has announced a Special Summary Revision where the intent is to include those who do not find a place in the rolls.

Dreze's argument, if true, would take the sting out of the opposition claim that the EC has deliberately set out to disenfranchise a large chunk of the electorate by deleting their names- that is, if deletions are not the problem in the first place.

The problem is that in some places- Delhi and Maharashtra, for instance- the deletions are far too numerous. And then in West Bengal, almost in 90 per cent of the appeals that have been  processed so far, the exclusions have been rejected. The proceedings in the honourable Supreme Court are on. We need to see what view the SC takes on the exclusions.