NCLT adjourns hearing on a waiver application by Mistry

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Friday adjourned hearing on a waiver application by Cyrus Mistry’s family firms till April 4, after Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the lawyer for Tatas presented his case against the waiver.

Cyrus Mistry’s family firms had sought a waiver on the minimum shareholding requirement in order to challenge the Tatas at the NCLT.

Presenting his case for not granting the waiver, Singhvi said that seven out of 10 allegations made in the waiver petition do not relate to Respondent 1 (R1), which is Tata Sons as those are against companies which are not even subsidiaries of Tata Sons. Singhvi argued that the waiver plea is not maintainable since affairs of subsidiaries are not maintainable under Section 397 of the Companies Act. These included companies like Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and Air Asia.
Singhvi went on to state that the waiver petition was a ‘brazen’ reargument of the review petition submitted by the Mistrys.

After Singhvi presented his arguments, the NCLT bench decided to post the matter to a later date. However, lawyers for both the sides failed to reach a conclusion for a long time with regards to the next hearing date. After a heated debate over the date, Aryama Sundaram walked out of the court stating that it would be ‘demeaning’ for him to argue with the other party over a date as he would not like to be part of a ‘fish market’.
DH News Service