Guwahati: The names proposed by the Union Government were rejected by the Supreme Court (SC), which also announced that it will create an expert committee to examine the Adani-Hindenburg Case’s regulatory framework.
The committee would be established by the court to maintain “complete (public) trust,” a bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said after rejecting a number of name suggestions from the union government.
CJI Chandrachud said, “We want full transparency… if we accept these suggestions, then it will be seen as a government-appointed committee, which we do not want. Leave it to us to decide.”
He further said, “However, we can’t start with a presumption of regulatory failure.”
The court had to seek out the opinions of the Union government and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last week while hearing a number of petitions on the Adani Group scandal. The government then told the court that it was okay with the formation of a committee but asked that its mandate not be outlined in a way that would make domestic and foreign investors feel that the regulatory framework is insufficient.
One of the petitioners, Vishal Sharma, stated before the court that he wanted both an audit of the Adani companies and “a reasonable valuation of the shares for loans being issued by banks.” In order to select a Supreme Court judge to look into the information in the Hindenburg report, he asked the court for instructions.
Another petitioner, M.L. Sharma, demanded “action against Hindenburg.” He demanded that Nathan Anderson, the company’s founder, be held accountable for “exploiting unsuspecting Investors through short selling while disguising it as an artificial crashing.” He requested that short selling be classified as a fraud offence by the court.
For a different petitioner, senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan asked the Supreme Court to establish a special inquiry team to look into the Hindenburg report, which highlighted the alleged Adani Group violation of stock market regulations.