New Delhi: Rakesh Sarna, former CEO and MD of Taj Hotels, has been accused of sexually harassing a former executive assistant. The allegations had surfaced anonymously in 2016, during the Mistry-Tata tussle. On Thursday, the woman, Anjuli Pandit, revealed to the Indian Express that Sarna had made “repeated unwanted sexual advances” and that despite knocking on several doors to highlight his behaviour, she was “left with no choice but to quit”.
Pandit, a US citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholder, now works with a financial advisory firm in London. She had joined the Tata Group in 2009, when she was 23. After taking a break to complete her master’s degree in Paris, she returned to Tata Sons in 2014, working with then chairman Cyrus Mistry’s office, managing government relations with Europe, Middle East, and North Africa.
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In an article she wrote for the Indian Express, Pandit said a year after she rejoined, Sarna asked if she could move to Taj Hotels as his executive assistant.
“In December we had an uncomfortable phone call to discuss my salary and when I wasn’t happy with his offer, Sarna said ‘I think you are beautiful enough to pay you a crore but I don’t have that kind of money honey.’ That was the first indication I had that something was not right,” Pandit said.
- Eventually, she was asked to resign from Taj Hotels and demoted to a “back-office job with the corporate communications team at Tata Sons”.
In January 2015, she moved to Taj as Sarna’s executive assistant. “Over the seven months, he remarked on my looks, his attraction to me and his desire to have an affair. His advances were very verbal, and I was always clear, I was not interested at all. Whether I deflected, professionally requested, or burst into tears in frustration, he persisted. The environment became intolerable as we both lost our patience,” she wrote.
She could not file an official complaint with the group’s Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) committee because it included Sarna and his subordinates as members. Instead, she approached Taj Board members, Tata Group Executive Council members, and the office of the chairperson. The only solution Pandit was offered was to resign from the Taj Group or be demoted to “a mediocre-at best position”. Several women who have spoken up during the #MeToo movement have also said that employers generally brushed off their complaints.
“Since I didn’t feel comfortable with the internal Taj processes, I decided to seek support from the board and largest shareholder, Tata Sons. What I didn’t realise, is that by not following the formal route, I was providing the Tata Group an opportunity to side-step best practices,” she told the Indian Express.
Eventually, she was asked to resign from Taj Hotels and demoted to a “back-office job with the corporate communications team at Tata Sons”.
Pandit resigned in November 2015, citing “the hostile environment at work” due to Sarna’s “repeated unwanted sexual advances” and her desire to “move out of Tata Group and into an organisation which values and respects women’s rights”.
Former Taj Hotels CEO and MD Rakesh Sarna.
In July 2016, a law firm acting on the behalf of Tata Sons tried to persuade her into signing a letter which stated that her “decision to quit the Tata Group was based purely on personal reasons”. She refused to sign the letter, which would have prohibited the media from writing any “speculative stories about my stint with the Tata Group”, threatening to take legal action if they do.
In November 2016, a year after her resignation and when the Tata-Mistry tussle blew up, contents of her resignation letter appeared in the media without naming her. Pandit said she was horrified and felt like a “mere pawn in the power struggle”.
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Tata Sons set up a committee to look into her allegations. She deposed before the committee in August 2016, but is still unaware of its findings or if any action was taken against Sarna. Pandit told the Indian Express that she had written to several people within Tata Sons requesting a copy of the report.
Sarna, who was said to be close to Cyrus Mistry, left the group in May 2017, just a few months after Mistry was ousted.
Read The Wire‘s extensive coverage of India’s #MeToo movement here.