NEW DELHI: After spending nearly a year listening to the high-stakes dispute between the Tata group and the Shapoorji Pallonji group, Chief Justice, SA Bobde, revealed on Monday that his defense son, Shrinivas Bobde, is running for a subsidiary from the SP group involved in a slum redevelopment project in Mumbai and asked if it would amount to a conflict of interest if he heard the case.
On Monday afternoon, the bench of three judges headed by Judge Bobde informed the lawyer of the friendly companies turned enemies, Harish Salve and CA Sundaram, if any of them wanted him to recuse himself from the hearing of the case. But, they both immediately said that they had no objections to the arguments of the CJI-led court hearing in the appeals filed by Tata sons against a December 18, 2019 order from the National Societies Law Court of Appeals, which had reinstated Cyrus Mistry as Tata Sons CEO.
A bank of CJI Bobde and Judges BR Gavai and Surya Kant suspended on January 10 the NCLAT ruling that had also made Tata Sons a public company. Mistry was named CEO of Tata Sons in 2012 and was fired by the board of directors on October 24, 2016, sparking the fight between the Tata group and the SP group, who had been partners since 1965.
The bank run by Bobde of the CJI recorded the no objection of the lawyers of both parties and said: “It is better to clarify these things at the beginning. Otherwise, it creates a lot of problems after a decision is made in the case.” Sundaram said there are so many companies and subsidiaries in the two large business groups that it is hard to imagine a bright young lawyer who has not represented a company associated with the two groups.
Appearing for SP group companies, Sundaram said that one of the skirmishes between Mistry and Ratan Tata was the former’s objection to being pressured by Tata to favor Wave about Uber in terms of using Tata cars as taxis. For Tata, AM Singhvi said that the letter cited by Mistry was an attempt to mislead the court. “Tata has less than 1% stake in Ola. This is being used to accuse Tata of favoring Ola. Tata’s intention was to maximize the use of Tata cars in the taxi aggregator operation.”
Referring to the inquiries Tata is making on this front from Mistry, the CJI-led bank asked: “What happens when the head of the family asks how the deal is going? India has traditional family business empires, be it Birlas, Modis or Tatas. It will be interesting to know how JRD Tata ran the company. It all depends on the type of family. We know so many eminent families who have disinherited eminent personalities. In the context of being a family business, what is wrong for Ratan Tatat to want information from Mistry? ”
Sundaram said it’s about the interest of the company’s shareholders and the relationship between majority and minority shareholders. SC would continue listening on Tuesday.
.
