By Vihaan Bhatnagar and Nadine Alsaghir 

The Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (TMSU) Board of Directors (BoD) voted to impeach faculty directors Sakina Haider and Eisa Kapadia yesterday. The BoD also served notices to impeach Abdullah Saiyid and Raiyan Mirja, who are now suspended pending an impeachment hearing.

Kapadia and Haider had been served notices to impeach at a BoD meeting on April 18, as previously reported by The Eyeopener. The agenda for that meeting stated they were being removed over conduct alleged in recent reports from MNP—the financial accounting firm contracted to investigate alleged interference in TMSU elections.

Saiyid and Mirja were removed from all committees at the April 18 meeting for conduct alleged in the MNP reports. 

The TMSU has not clarified the nature of the conduct the directors are accused of.

In the agenda for yesterday’s meeting, it was stated that, “the TMSU Board has serious concerns that Board members Raiyan Mirja and Abdullah Saiyid have not acted in the best interests of the corporation.” The BoD also removed Mirja as a signing authority with TMSU’s bank.

In an emailed statement to The Eye on April 24, Saiyid wrote, “we continued to exercise our governance responsibilities as elected directors. We asked questions. We objected to proceedings we believed were unlawful. We filed a workplace harassment complaint when the conduct against us and our colleagues crossed a line.”

The BoD reserves the right to remove a member on its own initiative by a two-thirds vote, according to TMSU by-law 4.16. 

The Eye reached out to all four implicated directors for additional comment, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

BoD members’ terms end on April 30.