The consent mechanism allows a party to settle disputes or suspected wrongdoing without the admission of guilt.

Bansal had been offered a severance package of Rs 17 crore after he red flagged the Panaya acquisition on the ground that Sikka and his cohorts had overpaid when it bought the Israeli automation technology firm for $200 million in 2015 - and alleged that they may have lined their pockets as well.

Bansal eventually quit Infosys in October 2015.

Later, Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy raised questions about Bansal's payout - which marked the start of a full-throated campaign to oust Sikka and former chairman R. Seshasayee for falling corporate governance standards arising from the Panaya buyout.

Murthy's case was built round the case that Bansal's payoff had not been cleared by either the audit committee or the nominations and remuneration committee, and had only been disclosed in May 2016 - an issue that has now come back to bite the software major.

After Murthy and his two acolytes, former CFOs Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan, raised a farrago of questions over the three investigation reports that cleared the Infosys board of the charges of wrongdoing in the Panaya buyout, both Sikka and Seshasayee stepped down in August, wearied by the relentless mudslinging campaign.

In late October, new chairman Nandan Nilekani said he was satisfied with the investigation into the Panaya buyout carried out by US law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and risk consultants Control Risks.

The investigation had found "no evidence to support" wrongdoing by the company, its directors or its employees. While Infosys had released a summary of the report, Murthy had demanded that the full report be made public.

After giving his clean chit, Nilekani indicated that the company would not release the full investigation report into the acquisition, which initially seemed to irk Murthy.

At that time, Murthy had said he was disappointed that the core questions he had raised remained unanswered. "The core question still is how and why the Infosys board approved an unusual and unprecedented severance payment agreement of 1000 per cent to the former CFO (Bansal)," he had said.

But a month later, Murthy did a flip-flop and was apparently persuaded to drop his campaign in the interests of company as his main objective of ousting Sikka and Seshasayee had been achieved.

The rapprochement with Murthy meant that Infosys could apply to Sebi to sort out the disclosure lapses over Bansal's payout under the consent mechanism.