Delhi HC bench of Justice Mukta Gupta after hearing a plea by Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail Ltd (FRL), Reliance and Amazon Inc; issued summons to Amazon Inc with respect to the question of maintainability of the suit. They also seeked for ad-interim injunction against Amazon for sending letters to various regulatory authorities writing about an injunction award by an Emergency Arbitrator against Future Retail Ltd’s acquisition by Reliance Industries Ltd’sentities for about Rs. 24, 713 crores.
Sr. Adv. Harish Salve appearing for FRL also argued that Amazon was neither a party to its agreement with its own shareholders nor Amazon was its shareholder, it was merely a shareholder of FCPL, so, it could not deny FRL’s right to enter into an agreement with Reliance. He also submitted that in the agreement between FCPL and FRL, FCPL jointly warranted that they were recording their inter se obligation and rights.
Salve further pointed that since Amazon had 49% stake in FCPL, which has 9.82% shares in FRL, Amazon’s stake in FRL becomes half effectively and would not cross the 10% limit imposed by India’s FDI policy in multi-brand retail sector.
And against the argument of Law Commission recommendation he responded that, Justice Nariman had already noted in a judgment by the Supreme Court that“recommendations by a Law Commission Report need not detain the court from interpreting the words as they are susceptible to being interpreted.”
Thereby the court directed the parties to file their replies within 30 days and its replication within 3 weeks of time and will continue to hear Sr. Adv. GopalSubramanium tomorrow, appearing for Amazon inc.
