Infosys’ new director sparks controversy: Dr. Punita Sinha is also Jayant Sinha’s wife

India’s second biggest outsourcing & IT giant, Infosys announced the appointment of Dr. Punita Kumar-Sinha to their board of directors. She will function as an independent director.

The 53 year old Dr. Sinha, is a leading equity advisor and a renowned investor. She worked as a fund manager with leading US firms in emerging and developed markets for the past 25 years.

But what has sparked controversy on social media especially on Twitter is that Punita is the better half of Jayant Sinha who is a junior finance minister within the BJP government.

However, Dr. Sinha is a professional in her own right, independent of her status as a politician’s wife. She is a managing partner & founder of Pacific Paradigm Advisors. She earlier worked with The Blackstone Group, handling a portfolio worth billions.

But some people are claiming on Twitter that the fact that she is the wife of Jayant Sinha, makes her appointment a clear case of conflicting interests, and it may even be nepotistic.

Infosys Appoints Punita Sinha,  Wife of Jayant Sinha, as Director. Clear case of #Nepotism?

@SATAVRAJEEV

#Infosys Appoints Punita Sinha, @jayantsinha Wife, As Director; Ideally she should refrain..

@shivamsethi

Other Twitter users were quick to draw parallels of a conflict of interest when Nalini Chidambaram legally represented the IT department. What made it awkward was that simultaneously, the then finance minister with the UPA government was her husband, P Chidambaram.

Remember the fuss when Nalini Chidambaram appeared as senior counsel for IT department when PC was FM?

@sanjayuvacha

If it is correct for Punita Kumar Sinha w/o Jayant Sinha to take up ind directors post at Infosys, how was Nalini Chidambaram wrong ?

@thakursahab

Several Twitter users however put paid to these remarks by pointing out the obvious: Dr. Sinha is an equity analyst and investor in her own right. She is not merely Jayant Sinha’s wife and in fact may even be more renowned than her husband as an investor.

@shuvankr @sanjayuvacha Punita Kumari Sinha may be the MOS Finance’s wife but she does have an independent standing in the corporate world

‏@sumsrewari

Being a board of director is not a new role either. She has served on the boards of companies like SKS Microfinance and Sobha Limited. She is also academically a heavyweight with a PhD  from Wharton. She is also a Chemical Engineer from IIT, New Delhi, which is where she met Jayant Sinha. This also makes her former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha’s daughter in law.

Infosys, beat estimates in Q3 and released a statement saying Dr Sinha has ‘spearheaded some of the first foreign investments into the Indian equity markets in the early 1990s.’

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