A division bench of justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and Rituraj Awasthi issued the notice on a PIL filed by ML Sharma and directed the three to file their reply within four weeks.
The Lucknow bench of the court also gave four-week time to the central government, PNB and PNB-Metlife to respond to the allegations levelled by petitioner.
Petitioner's counsel Nutan Thakur alleged that former PNB Chairman K R Kamath had initiated the joint venture PNB-Metlife, whose activity was conducted by PNB.