(This story originally appeared in on Feb 09, 2017)

BENGALURU: Rising tensions between the Infosys founders and the company CEO Vishal Sikka is grabbing all the attention but a careful reading of the situation makes it clear that the man under the most intense pressure, actually, is the company chairman, R Seshasayee According to people close to the situation, some of the founders have expressed unhappiness at the R Seshasayee-led board for not closely scrutinising some of the company's recent decisions which they claim have been at odds with established practices.This includes certain appointments, the severance packages of exiting senior staff, and the ballooning remuneration of the CEO. They believe Seshasayee -who took over from K V Kamath as non-executive chairman in 2015 -hasn't reined in Sikka on certain issues of “governances and values“.Former Infosys directors and senior executives were quiet vocal about it on Thursday .TV Mohandas Pai, who was CFO till 2011, said: “The chairman of any board has the obligation to lead it. Corporate governance demands that shareholders question the board on performance and other issues.It's a happy scenario that large shareholders are questioning the company on several issues.It's a good development for India.“V Balakrishnan, who succeeded Pai as Info sys' CFO, said: “If you look at the issues dispassionately , they (founders) are raising some serious governance concerns. Infosys stood for gold standard in corporate governance.It's a big distraction and employee morale will get impacted.“ Both Pai and Balakrishnan, at one point, were contenders for the top job at Infosys and left when they felt that path was blocked for them.According to sources, the generous severance payouts to former CFO Rajiv Bansal and former legal counsel David Kennedy has ruffled the founders who expressed their displeasure to Seshasayee. The huge exit payouts were a clear departure from Infosys' policy of paying a 3month severance that was factored into the employment contract. Infosys disclosed a Rs 17.38 crore severance payout, amounting to 24 months' pay , to Bansal and said that a certain part of it has been suspended pending clarifications of contractual rights and obligations. The company will pay Kennedy a severance of $868,250 (Rs 6 crore) over a 12 month period. Sikka's salary hike from $7 million to $11 million last year, has also been a sore point.Rod Bourgeois, head of research in DeepDive Equity Research said: “Sikka's style is certainly different from that of Infosys' founders. Sikka deserves credit for injecting new ideas and for rallying the troops around new aspirations.However, my ongoing concern is that Infosys' planned shift to automation and software content will encounter financial shortcomings.“The Infosys founders are also said to have opposed the use of private jets by the CEO. But some analyst believe that this philosophy is out of tune with global realities and could hamper Infosys's competitiveness. Phil Fersht, CEO of US based HfS Research, said, “Firing Vishal Sikka now would be a disaster. I fear for the Indian-heritage IT firms that get so wracked in politics -they have to be laser-focused, right now. This is going to be the crunch year for them, one that separates the wheat from the chaff. Infosys needs to stick by Vishal and his bold plans for the firm.“Dan Marcec, a director at compensation research firm Equilar, however, said: “It's difficult to make a broad declaration about being in tune with global realities, since most companies would say that their company's philosophies (and therefore pay practices) are in line with the interests of all employees, shareholders and in service of the greater good. Furthermore, pay packages for executives fluctuate from year to year, so depending on what you mean by the increase in compensation for Sikka--and how many years it has stayed relatively consistent--could make a difference if, overall, he has been compensated well over the years.“When TOI reached out to N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday about his concerns on how Infosys is being run, he did not deny specifically that there were issues. Asked if he had written a letter recently to Sikka appreciating his work, Murthy said: “I do not remember writing any recent letter to Vishal.“ When asked, “You have raised some concerns in the past including Sikka's compensation, severance packages and shifting value system.Are these still concerns for you? Do you feel Infosys is moving away from your philosophy of compassionate capitalism?“, Murthy replied: “I am in Hyderabad . These are best answered by Vishal and not me since I do not know answers to them except the first and the second questions. You know my answer to the first part of the second question. I leave the second part to Vishal.“Murthy recently called for a visa-independent global delivery model. He seemed to be publicly suggesting that the initiative he started has not been taken forward as aggressively as it should have been.