Corporate legal cases kept India Inc on its toes in 2014 as high stake matters on coal, telecom and mining came up in the Supreme Court which also sent Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy to jail.
Roy’s hide and seek game came to an end on March 4 when the apex court sent him along with two directors of the firm to jail for not complying with its order on refunding around Rs 20,000 crore of investors’ money.
It trashed Roy’s subsequent plea against his detention and frantic effort by the group to raise Rs 10,000 crore as a condition for his release is yet to see the light of the day.
The year 2014 hit the energy sector most when the top court cancelled “fatally flawed” coal block allocations since 1993 and did not mince words in condemning the screening committee decisions, endorsed by all ruling political groups.
It put the curtains down on the fate of 214 out of 218 coal blocks and consequential investments of around Rs 2 lakh crore and subsequent attempts of big corporates to wriggle out also proved futile as it shot them down.
While the cat and mouse game between SEBI and Sahara on Roy and strict scrutiny of coalgate was consuming tax payers money and time, the issues relating to illegal mining, 2G spectrum scam and dispute between Mukesh Ambani’s RIL and government over the gas pricing from KG basin hogged the limelight about the corporate matters in the Supreme Court.
The NDA government told the apex court that the fresh guidelines framed by it would “supersede” previous UPA dispensation’s policy on price fixation for natural gas which has come under scrutiny in the wake of PILs including one filed in 2013 by senior CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta.
The PILs have also sought cancellation of Reliance Industries Ltd’s contract for exploration of oil and gas from the KG basin.