MUMBAI: The Tata Sons board had not only approved of the strategy and vision document presented to it by a team led by former chairman Cyrus Mistry , but it had actively participated in its development, said Nirmalya Kumar, former strategy head at Tata Sons.The board fired Mistry without a reason and is now trying to invent reasons, alleged Kumar who was among three members of the powerful group executive committee (GEC) of Tata Sons who were asked to leave when Mistry was ousted as group chairman on October 24.Later, in a statement Tata Sons, the holding company of India’s largest conglomerate, had severely criticised the strategy document as “text-bookish” and full of big intentions without pathways leading to goals.“It’s not Cyrus’s strategy, it’s not my strategy. This strategy evolved with the group — Tata Sons board — over several discussions, over two years,” Kumar told. He said presentations were made to the board in June 2015, December 2015 and June 2016. Also, every year the Tata Sons board was presented with a yearly plan as well as a four-year rolling plan to keep them updated, Kumar said.A Tata Sons spokesperson said: “Despite repeated presentations even on September 2016, vision statement was not accepted.”Kumar, who is now working out of Shapoorji Pallonji Centre, said he was at a loss to explain why the Tata Sons board removed Mistry. “How will I be able to tell you about somebody else’s motivation — who I had met for 10 minutes,” he said.He said he has met Ratan Tata , the man who came back as the interim chairman of Tata Sons after Mistry’s removal, only once. “It was an innocuous get-to know kind of meeting.”Kumar stressed that even today, the Tatas have failed to provide a clear reason for removing Mistry from the chairmanship. “In the letter that was given formally nothing was mentioned as a reason. I am sorry, I have seen the letter. Was there anything mentioned about that? No. Later somebody said it was performance,” he said.“When you fire somebody without a reason, you thought you will not have to give a reason. When people push you for a reason you start inventing these reasons,” he said. “When none of your arguments work, then you look at the audience and say, do you realise this guy used to be a communist? We are now down to that. When no arguments work you say, culture and ethos — he didn’t fit. What can I say to that?”The Tata Sons spokesperson pointed out that it has already issued a detailed statement on November 10, detailing the reasons for removing Mistry from chairmanship of Tata Sons.Kumar said he will leave for London at the end of this month and go back to academics. He said he has offers from three of the world’s top 10 business schools.The 42-page strategy document, also known as the Vision 2025 document, that Kumar spoke about divides Tata Group companies in four buckets.The first one was for the top companies or winners — TCS , Jaguar Land Rover, Voltas and Titan — the second were hotspots such as Indian Hotels, Tata Teleservices and Tata Steel , followed by group companies that were growing but could grow much faster and lastly the next generation businesses.Kumar said one of the first things Mistry told him after he joined was that Tata Sons must have different parenting styles for different group companies — sometimes acting like a private equity firm or a venture capitalist, and at other times like an established business group or holders of winning assets.