HCL asks techgoss blogger to remove post
By Bala Shah

Is prolific Techgoss contributor Techgirl is trouble?  She has made many frenemies within techgoss and in the general IT/BPO sectors.  Techgirl called our Editor “boring and dull” and labeled Techgoss as Trashgoss in her blog.  She declared her crush for Genpact boss Pramod Bhasin and posted ‘unauthorised’ wedding photos of Hotmail founder. Now she faces a legal warning.

Techgirl blog Midnight Confession of IT/BPO/KPO Managers is part humour, part satire and part juvenile.  As it did not have much revenue stream, she stopped blogging and started writing for techgoss.

In Nov 30, 2007, Techgirl wrote a satirical piece about how family man and HCL CEO, Vineet Nayar, wanted everyone in his company to enjoy happy, fulfilling lives with children.  Needless, to say it was written in her brash, caustic style. 

Yesterday, (14 months after the blog post) an HCL employee sent her the following letter asking her to remove the post about his big boss or face ‘legal action’

“
K.S. Ram Kishore, HCL Noida
Feb 16, 2009

Dear Techgirl,
 
This is regarding your post on Mr.Vineet Nayar, CEO – HCL Technologies, at http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/hcl-ceo-vineet-nayar-laptops-preventing.html . It has been understood that the post contains objectionable content in it and needs to be removed.
 
I request you to remove the post within 24 hrs. Else legal action would be taken as per the law of the land.
“

HCL Technologies on its website claims to have 59 thousand employees and revenue of  $5 billion.  In press releases to the media it describes itself as “HCL Technologies, India’s leading Global Technology and IT Services Company”.   Someone forgot to tell them TCS is No. 1.

Why would HCL threaten a satire blog read by a few hundred people a month?  Will HCL go ahead and sue Techgoss (sponsor of the blog) and Techgirl?  Will Vineet Nayar stand in court and tell a Judge how he is the victim of libel?  Is Vineet Nayar in the dark about moves by his juniors to clamp down on Techgirl?

Has HCL made Techgirl a martyr by threatening legal action?  Will more people read her blog now that a big commercial company wants to squeeze a small blog?

Only if we could see the future.

Techgirl herself is stoic.  She told me that she is preparing an ‘unconditional apology’ to HCL even more humiliating than the one offered by European blogger to NDTV star Barkha Dutt. Knowing Techgirl,  her apology will be more satire than sincere.