The Maharashtra government informed the Legislative Council that Tata Consultancy Services laid off 376 employees from its Pune campuses over two quarters in the current financial year, based on data the company itself provided.
Maharashtra Government Reports 376 TCS Layoffs at Pune Campuses During Current Financial Year
This information was shared during Question Hour after MLCs Uma Khapre, Praveen Darekar, and Prasad Lad raised concerns about possible retrenchments in the IT sector.
The legislators specifically asked the government to clarify reports suggesting that up to 30,000 TCS employees were being retrenched across multiple cities, including Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
Labour Minister Aakash Fundkar stated that the figure of 376 layoffs came directly from TCS and covered two quarterly periods of the ongoing financial year.
Fundkar also told the House that TCS currently employs 45,575 people across its Pune campuses.
The Forum for IT Employees (FITE), an organisation representing IT workers’ interests in Maharashtra, challenged the government’s numbers and claimed that far more employees had been pushed out in recent months.
FITE chief Pavanjit Mane rejected the official figure, saying, “The figure is completely wrong and false… It should not be 376 employees; the figure could be nearly 2,000 to 2,500 employees who have been laid off,” as reported by The Indian Express.
FITE Alleges “Silent Layoffs” Excluded From Official TCS Termination Figures
According to FITE, the government’s data only counted formal terminations and failed to include employees who were allegedly pressured to resign, which the group referred to as “silent layoffs.”
Mane also questioned TCS’s assertion that more than 2,000 employees had left voluntarily, arguing that such departures should be reviewed separately from officially recorded layoffs.
The forum said it has written to the state government demanding a detailed investigation into both the alleged retrenchments and the forced resignations.
FITE further pointed to TCS’s dividend payout in the last financial year and questioned why affected employees did not receive support that the organisation claims had been promised to them.
In response, Fundkar told the Council that TCS had indicated the layoffs were limited to middle and senior management roles and clarified that they were not connected to artificial intelligence or automation.
The conflicting claims have renewed scrutiny over how large IT companies classify and report job losses, with employee groups urging the state to examine exits that go beyond formal layoffs.
