A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan stayed the proceedings in all the High Courts and issued notices to the Sebi, NGOs and others to file their replies to the allegations.

The entire purpose of filing the writ petitions of similar nature before different courts is to somehow to harass the petitioners and to keep the companies busy in litigation so that the  initial public offer floated by the petitioners are unduly harmed, said the petition filed by Advocate E C Agrawala.

Similar petitions 

Senior Advocate Harish Salve, who mentioned the petition before the court, accused NGOs of waging corporate war at various fora and said that the Rajkot-based NGO — Grahak Suraksha Mandal had earlier also taken the issue before the Bombay High Court and Sebi.

He contended that the High Court was to take up the PIL filed against the company on Wednesday and if the apex court did not interfere then similar petitions would be filed all over the country to ‘blackmail’ the company, which was coming out with the  initial public offer from January 15.  “The PIL by Grahak Mandal in Gujarat High Court is motivated and it is just a blackmail strategy on its part as we are coming with our initial public offer on January 15,” Mr Salve said.

Harm the ‘interest’

The people had intended to invest in the  initial public offer and any litigation at the behest of the private persons would harm the interest of the company, said the petition which sought to stay all proceedings in any other courts in the country.

The company also sought the direction of the court to transfer the petitions from other High Courts to Bombay High Court saying that the headquarters of the company is at Mumbai and it would be difficult in its part to defend it in other courts.