The Division Bench of the Supreme Court of India on Friday has upheld the Calcutta High Court decision to not initiate a probe into the disinvestment of Metro Dairy by the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government.
This petition, which came before the Top court in form of application was filed by the West Bengal Congress President and MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
The Bench comprising Justice M.R. Shah and Justice Krishna Murari refused to entertain the special leave petition.
Senior Advocate Maninder Singh who appeared on behalf of the appellant held that no interference with the High Court order was warranted.
The Calcutta High Court had dismissed a PIL by Chowdhury in June 2022, which urged the Court for directing an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the disinvestment of Metro Dairy.
Metro Dairy was established in 1991 as a public-private venture, where 47 percent of stake was held by with the state-run West Bengal Milk Producers Federation, the 10 percent shares were controlled by the National Dairy Development Board, whereas the remaining shares were vested in a private limited company, Keventer Agro.
After the exit of the Central board in 2014, Keventer Agro acquired the central board’s shares as well. In August 2017, the Government of West Bengal approved the sale of the entirety of its stake to the project’s sole private partner for around Rs. 85 crores.
Now the Keventer Agro transferred 15% of its shares to a Singapore-based firm, Mandala Capital, for around Rs. 135 crores within a matter of few weeks.
This decision of Mamata Banerjee led cabinet was hugely criticised by the members of the opposition parties.
The petitioner too was critical of this decision.The petitioner is the leader of the Indian National Congress in the 17th Lok Sabha and currently the president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee.
The petitioner had earlier moved to the Calcutta High Court, highlighting that the State Government, which had set up Metro Dairy with public money, had suffered a loss of “at least Rs. 500 crores” by selling its stakes.
The petition, talked about foul play and prayed that this transaction should be examined by some agency as it lacked transparency.
Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj rejected the petitioner’s contentions and held that the decision of the West Bengal government to conclude the transaction in the manner it to conclude the transaction in the manner it did was “neither illegal nor arbitrary”.
The bench said the only thing that needs to be seen is the if the proper procedure been followed in the case and if the reserve price was arbitrarily low and on the face of it, unacceptable.
The judgement read, “We find that policy decision of the State to sell 47% shares of Respondent No. 5, MDL, was neither illegal nor arbitrary and State had also not adopted non-transparent or opaque procedure for sale of shares, hence no case for interference in the present writ petition is made out which is accordingly, dismissed.”
Aggrieved by this order, the petitioner approached the Supreme Court.