Former HDFC Bank Chairman Atanu Chakraborty Says Board Should Have Been More Honest Instead of Appointing Law Firms

Why the "Call of Conscience" Didn't Need a Corporate Investigation

Former HDFC Bank chairman Atanu Chakraborty has publicly criticised the bank’s decision to engage outside law firms to determine why he resigned. He says he feels it would have been a lot fairer and more grown-up if the board had just sat down with him and talked through his concerns directly and honestly, rather than hiding behind a corporate investigation.

Chakraborty walked away from his role back in March, making it clear at the time that his personal values just didn’t align with how things were being run at the bank. For him, the resignation was not a legal fight or a regulatory issue but a personal cry of conscience. He'd hoped his sudden departure would make the board do some soul-searching, but instead they hired a team of lawyers to audit his reasons.

Fallout over clean corporate health bill

The whole issue resurfaced after HDFC Bank said it had been cleared of any wrongdoing by an independent legal review. The outside law firms found no board minutes, emails or witness statements to back up Chakraborty’s claims of ethical issues. Chakraborty, however, chose not to participate in the investigation at all. He said he skipped it because the bank would not give him a clear answer about what the lawyers were looking for or even the legal basis of the probe.

But the drama has certainly shed light on the inner workings of India’s largest private lender, though on paper the bank now gets a clean bill of health. It opens up a much broader conversation about corporate governance, transparency and what top-tier executives do when internal conflicts between ethics and corporate interests come up.