When a mandarin locked horns with Rahul Bajaj

There has been much hand-wringing in India Inc on how the new Companies Bill is being worked into shape by the ministry of corporate affairs.

The angst was on show when two senior-most officials in the ministry met with industry leaders at the 6th CII corporate governance summit held in Mumbai on Friday, with pot-shots hurled by both sides, albeit in good humour.

Rahul Bajaj, chairman, CII national council on corporate governance fired the first salvo: “We need to judge if we need regulation. Regulation should not stifle business,” he said, suggesting he is not happy with the ministry’s overzealous approach to regulation.

R Bandyopadhyay, secretary of the ministry, was not taking this lying down. His riposte: “Agreed, 50 or 100 years later, we can work under self-regulation but for now there has to be enlightened regulation.”

Bajaj, seated alongside Salman Khurshid, the minister for corporate affairs, could only shrug.

But the bespectacled bureaucrat was not done. He picked on Bajaj’s comments which quoted from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech made earlier this week at a similar conference in New Delhi.

“Bajaj quoted a few lines from the prime minister’s speech. I have got the entire 45-minute speech videotaped on a CD which I would like the minister to present to Bajaj,” Bandyopadhyay said, emphasising Bajaj didn’t get what the PM had said.

Bajaj, before rising to accept the CD, asked the secretary if they had made enough copies of the disc.

“Yes, we have enough to distribute it to all; This does not have any copyright protection. So feel free to watch it,” Bandyopadhyay said, amid applause from laughing delegates.

Khurshid’s 20-minute speech was peppered with “trust”; he underlined how it was imperative that industry “trusts” the government and the people “trust” the government.

But, according to the Oxford-educated lawyer, the operative word was sadly missing in the current environment, coming at a time when Nira Radia tapes has rocked the government.

The minister even took a dig at the Opposition for having stalled the winter session of the Parliament.

“I don’t know if even the Budget would be able to pass in the forthcoming Budget session,” Khurshid remarked.

The verbal jousting ended amicably when Bajaj hugged the minister on stage and even shielded him from a pack of penpushers.