'Independent directors should be accountable'

Independent directors, who served on the boards of many companies without taking interest and spent insignificant amounts of time in meetings, have turned corporate governance into a 'farce', Madhav Mehra, president of UK-based World Council for Corporate Governance said.

"We have turned corporate governance into a farce", Mehra said in this context at the three-day Corporate Governance Summit and 20th World Congress on Total Quality, organised by the Institute of Directors and WCFCG, which began on Friday.

He stressed the need for making independent directors accountable and decried tendency among some of them to serve many companies and spending not much time attending board meetings. "You need directors of independent mind. We need to value dissent", he said. "Quality of boardrooms has become vital".

Karnataka's Industries Secretary V P Baligar said private companies should also be brought under the RTI so that their shareholders can ask questions concerning the entities.

Inaugurating the event, Karnataka Governor H R Bhardwaj said the boardrooms must be "sincere".

Former Chief Justice of India, Justice M N Venkatachaliah said the coming decade is going to be decisive in humankind in the areas of science and technology and genetic engineering and stem cell research.