YES Bank has sought NCLT’s direction to the company to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) for the reconstitution of the company’s board.
In May last year, YES Bank invoked promoters’ pledged shares in Dish TV to own 25.63% stake in the DTH company. On September 6 this year, it sent a requisition notice to the company’s board to convene a special meeting of the shareholders to reconstitute the board and sought the removal of its promoter Jawahar Goel from the company.
Goel is the brother of Subhash Chandra, founder promoter of the erstwhile Essel Group.
After Dish TV board declined the requisition, YES Bank moved to the tribunal seeking a special shareholders meeting.
“We want to file our reply on merit, jurisdiction and maintainability in the matter and we are seeking time for the same,” argued Navroz Seervai, senior counsel, appearing for the Dish TV. “Yesterday, in a similar matter the Bombay High Court has passed an order and we also want to put that on record which clarified that NCLT has no jurisdiction to entertain this kind of plea.”
The bench, headed by Suchitra Kanuparthi and Anuradha Bhatia allowed the time till November 15 to Dish TV to file its response in the matter and has posted the case for further hearing to November 23.
Senior Counsels, Darius Khambata and JP Sen are representing Yes Bank in the case also sought time to file their rejoinder to the reply of Dish TV.
The tribunal has also allowed the lender to file a response to Dish TV’s reply before the next date of hearing.
The private lender has sought tribunal’s intervention to direct the company to either share shareholder details – so it can call the meeting on its own – or instruct it to set a date for an EGM.
“Owing to YBL (Yes Bank) being a Banking Company and its shareholding in the Company (Dish TV) being a consequence of invocation of pledges, there are certain embargos under the provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 read with Securities and Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011, because of which the said resolutions cannot be placed before the shareholders,” said Dish TV in its exchange filing on October 13, at the time of rejecting the requisition request of the bank.
