What Nirmalya Kumar has to say on why Tata Group fired him

Kumar said he has been fired for his close association with Cyrus Mistry

Nirmalya Kumar, a member of the ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry's Group Executive Council, lost his job along with Mistry in the surprise move that took corporate India by storm. 

Writing in a blog post, Kumar described how he got the news and what happened next. 

Business Standard brings you the key takeaways from Kumar's post. 

1) Fired for working closely with Mistry: Kumar revealed that he could not have been fired for non-performance and said that his last evaluation had been "excellent". He attributed his removal to "working intensely and extensively with Cyrus".

2) News of Mistry's ouster came as a surprise: Kumar wrote that he received the news of Mistry's ouster while he was on a panel in front of a 100+ young students and managers who were participating at TBLA, a competition that Tata sponsors annually. The theme of the event was big data and Kumar was present since he had led the Tata Group's push on big data. Kumar wrote that he wrapped up the session quicker than planned and headed home after receiving the news. 

3) Kumar was told to clear out along with Mistry: Kumar described how at 9:00 pm he got a a call from a colleague, with whom Kumar said he had worked very closely, informing him that he would be following Mistry on the way out. According to Kumar, no explanation was provided for his removal and that he was told that he did not need to turn up to work from the next day. 

4) Treatment after removal: Kumar also wrote about how he was treated by the employees and higher-ups in the Tata Group after his own ouster. Kumar wrote: "The interesting insight for me was that the higher in the organisation you go, this 'human' aspect declines." He revealed that middle-level employees, like the members of his team, treated him with the same affection as before. However, according to Kumar, other than three exceptions the CEOs and executives at the helm of the group's many concerns remained "silent".

5) Advice for his team: Kumar wrote that he told the members of his team to not mention anything positive about him in the future if his name came up. Kumar's parting advice to his team was: "Throw me under the bus to gain credibility in the new regime."    

6) Nothing bad to say about the Tata Group: Writing that what happened was not the fault of the 670,000 Tata people and did not "reflect on them", Kumar made it clear that he nothing negative to say about the group. "What I found exceptional about the group was the kind of person that Tata attracts – unpretentious and dedicated," he wrote.