Siddhartha Lal voted down as Eicher's MD over pay hike proposal; co working to resolve issue

Shareholders of Eicher Motors Ltd have voted against the re-appointment of Siddhartha Lal as the managing director of the automobile company protesting the proposal to raise his salary by 10 percent.

Shareholders were against the quantum of salary hike for Lal, considering that the company's revenues and profit growth had been hit by the pandemic and also because the median employee salary hike was 1 percent, according to a report in The Economic Times.

The proposals to raise Lal's salary and his re-appointment as the managing director of Eicher were clubbed and brought to vote before shareholders,  the report said.

The development comes a week after Eicher replaced Vinod K Dasari with B Govindarajan as the chief executive officer of Royal Enfield, a division of Eicher Motors. Govindarajan has been the chief operating officer at Royal Enfield since 2013. Meanwhile, Dasari, who recently started a not-for-profit hospital in Chennai, will work towards building affordable and accessible health care facilities.

Eicher Motors reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 237 crore during the first quarter of 2021-22 as against a loss of Rs 55 crore same time last year.

The surge in revenues was largely due to a low base last year when the nationwide lockdown had caused sales to slump.

According to the company, 1,22,170 Royal Enfield motorcycles were sold in the first quarter of this financial year, an increase of 109 percent year on year.

Besides, Eicher's commercial vehicle joint venture with Volvo also recorded a 156 percent year-on-year increase in sales. In the first quarter of FY22, the sales jumped to Rs 1,639 crore.