Cyrus Mistry’s attempt to avenge hurt pride falls flat again

Cyrus Mistry’s attempt to avenge the hurt pride and regain the lost job fell flat once again. The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the petitions filed by Cyrus Investments Pvt Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt Ltd to review the apex court's March 2021 judgment, which upheld Mistry’s removal as chairman of Tata Sons. A bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana dismissed the review petition. It was the bench headed by former Chief Justice SA Bobde that pronounced the judgement in March last year.

On the dismissal of the review petition, Ratan Tata said the judgement reinforces the value systems and ethics of our judiciary. “We would like to express our grateful appreciation of the judgement passed and upheld by the Supreme Court today,” he said.

There was not much hope in the matter for Mistry as the apex court had earlier rejected the arguments that his ouster was “oppressive”. The Supreme Court had ruled completely in favour of the $110 billion multi-sector conglomerate in March 2021, by setting aside a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order, which reinstated Cyrus Mistry as executive chairman. The Mistry family holds a minority 18.37% stake in Tata Sons.

However, the apex court on Thursday agreed to expunge some of the remarks made against Mistry. It has also directed to remove some of the offensive paragraphs written in Mistry firms’ application. In February, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the review petition filed by the firms of the Cyrus Mistry family.

The Supreme Court bench, which dismissed the appeals filed by Mistry in March 2021, had earlier stated that all questions of law were in favour of Tata Group. So it upheld the decision of Tata Sons to sack Cyrus Mistry on October 24, 2016.

In February this year, a bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana and comprising Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, considered the review petition filed by Mistry.

The top court, in its February 15 order, allowed applications seeking exemption from filing affidavits and applications seeking oral hearing of the review petitions. Justice Ramasubramanian dissented and noted that he could not agree for considering a review of the earlier judgement.

Senior advocates Harish N Salve and AM Singhvi appeared for Tata.

The Supreme Court's earlier ruling that blocked the reappointment of Mistry as chairman of Tata Sons was a big win for Ratan Tata. Tata Group had moved ahead and implemented the transformation plan of chairman N Chandrasekaran. It was Tata who initiated the removal of Mistry as he had a feeling that the group was not going in the direction that he wished. Besides, Mistry wielding more power in the Tata group was another worry.

Tata's immediate choice was Chandrasekaran, who headed TCS at that point in time. Since Chandrasekaran took over the top job in February 2017, Tata Group has been trying to pivot the business by leveraging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics and cloud computing, and resolving the legacy issues in group companies.