Supreme Court dismisses Chanda Kochhar's plea for retirement benefits

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the plea by former ICICI Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Chanda Kochhar against the bank for the release of her post-retirement benefits.

The bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti said they would not interfere with the Bombay High Court's May 3 order that refused to stay Kochhar’s termination on January 30, 2019, four months after the bank approved her resignation on October 4, 2018.

After ICICI received a complaint against Kochhar in 2018, it formed a committee headed by retired Supreme Court Judge Justice BN Srikrishna to probe the allegations.

Kochhar then said she would go on leave till the probe was completed and sought an early retirement on October 3, 2018, which was accepted by ICICI subject to certain conditions.

After the committee submitted its report in January 2019, which indicted Kochhar, the bank board treated Kochhar’s separation as ‘Termination for Cause’ and revoked her retirement benefits.

Kochhar then filed a suit seeking retirement benefits such as employee stock options and other entitlements that she said were unconditionally provided to her when the bank accepted her early retirement in 2018.

She alleged that the bank was fully aware of the terms of reference and scope of the probe when entering into a contract with Kochhar, granting her benefits unconditionally but later reneged from its contractual commitment arising out of its acceptance letter without any justification.

Senior Advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Kochhar, said the High Court order had allowed the attachment of her assets without any reasoning. “These are shares in her possession, and she had paid for these,” he said.

Kochhar also said that she had not just been deprived of her retirement benefits but also restrained from dealing with 690,000 shares for which she paid in full.

The bench, however, said ‘no interference’ is required and dismissed the appeal.

Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told another bench of the Supreme Court on Friday that they will be moving an application before the Bombay High Court to vacate the interim bail granted to Chanda Kochhar and her husband, Deepak Kochhar, in the ICICI Bank-Videocon loan fraud case.

CBI in its chargesheet in January 2019 had said Kochhar as CEO of ICICI Bank had granted loans worth Rs 3,250 crore to Videocon in violation of the credit policies of the bank which caused wrongful loss to the bank and wrongful gain to her and her husband.