Adani-Hindenburg case | Supreme Court to deliver verdict on ‘conflict of interest’ allegations against panel

The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on January 3, 2024 on a batch of petitions on the Adani-Hindenburg row over allegations of stock price manipulation by the Indian corporate giant.

The Supreme Court will pronounce its judgment on January 3 on a plea to form a separate Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate Hindenburg Research’s allegations against the Adani Group.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had reserved the petition filed by Anamika Jaiswal, through advocate Prashant Bhushan, who had argued that the earlier committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice A.M. Sapre, had a “conflict of interest” on the issue.

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Mr. Bhushan had contended that one of the committee members, O.P. Bhatt, a former chairman of the State Bank of India, is Chairman of Greenko, a leading renewable energy company. Since March 2022, Greenko and the Adani Group have worked in a close partnership to provide energy to Adani Group facilities in India, he submitted.

The senior lawyer had also trained his guns on advocate Somasekhar Sundaresan, another committee member who was recently appointed an Additional Judge of the Bombay High Court. Mr. Bhushan said that Mr. Sundaresan had appeared as a lawyer for the Adani Group in 2006 and had been on “several SEBI committees”.

The Justice Sapre Committee was constituted by the Supreme Court on March 2 to investigate the causal factors and existence, if any, of regulatory failure which led to investors losing crores due to volatility in the securities market following Hindenburg Research’s report accusing the Adani Group of manipulation of share prices and account fraud.