The Supreme Court bench of Justices R F Nariman and Vineet Saran has held Anil Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Communications, guilty of contempt of court for defaulting payments to Ericsson as per the undertaking given to the Court. The three Reliance Companies - RCom, Reliance Telecom and Reliance InfraTel- are also held guilty of contempt, and fine of Rs One Crore each has been imposed on them. The Court however has given an opportunity to Reliance companies to purge contempt by paying Rs.453 crores to Ericsson within 4 weeks, failing which Anil Ambani will be sent to prison for three months.
The Swedish gear-maker has alleged that Reliance group has "wilfully and consciously" defied the order dated August 3 of the top court and the undertaking given before it to pay up by September-end. The apex court had on October 23 had given one last opportunity to RCom for clearing the settlement amount, by setting December 15 as the deadline. When this deadline was also missed, the SC issued contempt notice to Ambani on January 6. The bench was not prepared to accept the offer of part-settlement made by RCom for Rs. 118 crores.
Meanwhile, another controversy had occurred, when the order issued by Court on January 7 requiring personal presence of Ambani and other officers was found to be tampered with. Though the bench had specifically made it clear that personal appearance is not dispensed with, the copy of the order uploaded in the official website of the top court stated personal appearance is dispensed with. This led to an internal enquiry, resulting in the summary dismissal of summarily dismissed two court masters, Manav Sharma and Tapan Kumar Chakrabort.
Courtesy/By: Sakshi Shukla
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21 Feb 2019
