Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata on Friday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to quash a company law appellate court order directing the group's holding company Tata Sons to rehire the chairman it had fired in 2016, saying the judgment was "wrong, erroneous and contrary to the record of the case".
His petition is separate from the one filed by Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the USD 110 billion salt-to-software conglomerate, in the Supreme Court on Thursday that sought a stay on the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's December 18, 2019, order to reinstate Cyrus Mistry as chairman.
Ratan Tata, who is chairman emeritus and a shareholder of Tata Sons, in the petition said the NCLAT judgment was wrong as it treats Tata Sons as a two-group company.
Mistry, he contended, was made the Executive Chairman of Tata Sons in a purely professional capacity and not as a representative of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which holds 18.4 per cent in Tata Sons.
Tata Trusts, of whom Ratan Tata had been a chairman for many years, holds 65.89 per cent of Tata Sons.
The petition said the NCLAT order wrongly suggests that "someone from the SP Group had been a director because of some entrenched right or convention".
Trustees of Sri Dorabji Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust also filed separate petition in the Supreme Court saying the NCLAT judgment "suffers from grave errors of law and is essentially a judgment of unexplained conclusions which are based on no reasoning or reasoning which is, on the face of it, erroneous as a matter of law and practice of company law and/or is derived from factually incorrect assumptions."
Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) in its petition that it was not a party to the proceedings either before the NCLT or the NCLAT and it has been "denied the opportunity to defend the justified, legitimate and lawful removal of Mistry as its Director."
The chairman emeritus targeted Mistry for the handling of the failed partnership with Japan's DoCoMo saying it showed his "complete obstinacy" as he attempted to resist complying with the legal obligations further. "This is not what the Tata Sons brand stands for. Quite to the contrary, honouring its commitments is one of Tata Sons' highest virtues it takes great pride in. Spat with DoCoMo brought ill-repute and reputational losses to Tata Sons."
"The Impugned Judgment is also infirm because it blatantly indulges in propagating a selective narrative where relevant facts and records have been glossed over," he said. "The pretense of reasoning and judicial approach is betrayed by omission to consider the record itself."