The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday rejected a plea by the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Mumbai, which had sought amendments to the appellate tribunal’s December 18, 2019, order on the dispute between Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry.
Dismissing the plea, a two-member Bench comprising NCLAT Chairperson SJ Mukhopadhaya and Member (Judicial) Bansi Lal Bhat said the judgment does not cast any aspersions on the RoC.
One of the grievances of the RoC was that certain observations made in the judgment cast aspersions on the Registrar, even though it was not a party to the Tata-Mistry case before the NCLAT.
Absence of merit
The NCLAT said that in the absence of any merit, the application by the RoC stood dismissed. “Therefore, no ground is made out to amend the judgment dated December 18, 2019, in absence of any factual or legal error apparent on the body of the aforesaid judgment,” the NCLAT said in its ruling.
The appellate tribunal, in its order, also stated that it did not accuse the RoC of any specific mala fide action.
In its judgment on Monday, the NCLAT said the action by the company (Tata Sons) and its board of directors’ decision to convert the company into a private one has been referred to as “hurried” and that nothing has been alleged against the RoC, Mumbai. Seeking an “urgent listing”, the RoC had sought to have the ruling modified to remove aspersions regarding any “hurried help by the RoC, Mumbai, to Tata Sons,” except what was statutorily required.
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In its petition, filed on December 23, 2019, the RoC had sought an impleadment in the Tata-Mistry case, deletion of the words “illegal”, and certain amendments to the appellate tribunal’s December 18, 2019 order reinstating Cyrus Mistry as chairman of Tata Sons.
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In its earlier order, the NCLAT had quashed the conversion of Tata Sons, the holding company of all Tata Group entities, into a private company from a public firm and had termed this as “illegal”.
The RoC also said it had acted in a “bona fide manner” while approving the conversion of Tata Sons to a private company.
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