By Dr Swati Jindal Garg
What appeared to be a small feud between a brother and sister has turned into a full blown, high-profile legal battle between the former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and his sister YS Sharmila. This led to Reddy writing to the National Company Law Tribunal, or NCLT as it is called, seeking to nullify her “illegal” transfer of shares in Saraswati Power and Industries Private Limited to herself and their mother YS Vijayalakshmi. Reddy also wrote to his sister accusing her of deceit and further apprising her that he had no intention of honouring the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that they had entered into. After the contents of his letter became public, Sharmila’s written response to the same also went public.
The enmity that Sharmila started with Reddy has now gone viral, with Reddy claiming that there was no longer any affection between the siblings while the sister claims that the relations have become sour due to Reddy not distributing assets equally between the four grandchildren of YS Rajasekhar Reddy (their father), as desired by him. In fact, such is the state of affairs now that Reddy along with his wife has petitioned the NCLT to reinstate the two as shareholders with the same equity share holding as before the transfers were made by Sharmila in her and their mother’s name. The duo also alleged that the share transfers to Sharmila and Vijayamma were carried out through a board resolution in July 2024 without following proper legal procedure.
The petition further stated that Reddy had entered into a an MoU with his sister Sharmila in August 2019 to transfer certain properties and shares “out of love and affection”, but this transfer was never executed owing to the rivalry between the siblings, and Reddy had then changed his mind. In the light of these developments, Reddy claimed that the share transfers made by Sharmila were in violation of the MoU arrived at between them and were the result of a “deceitful deviance of law” hence being “invalid, illegal, void, and unlawful”.
The NCLT issued notice to the accused parties and will hear the matter again in November.
“Out of the sheer love and affection, I always bore towards you as my sister, I had also expressed my intention that, unrelated to any consideration and purely out of love and affection, I intended to effect transfer of certain properties to you at a future point of time. This was in addition to the amount of approximately Rs 200 crore already given to you directly or through our mother over the last decade or so. This too was given by me out of my sheer love and affection for you,” Reddy wrote in a letter addressed to his sister.
He also pointed out that along with the ancestral property inherited from their father, he had also built his own businesses over a period of time to which the sister retaliated by writing that he had not acted in accordance to the will of their late father that directed to distribute the property equally among all four of his grandchildren. “Our father was unequivocal in his instructions that all four of his grandchildren are to share equally in all assets that existed during his lifetime, whether they pertain to Bharathi Cements, Sakshi, or any other venture initiated prior to his passing,” Sharmila wrote. She also claimed that the transfer of shares was part of the property sharing “settlement”. “Since you had the upper hand, you did bulldoze your way and we agreed to a settlement as stated in the MoU. Since you are my elder brother and in the interest of resolving family disputes, I agreed to give up my equal share. Thus, under the MoU, only a few properties were assigned to me,” she alleged.
“You have now chosen to file cases against your own mother and deprive your own sister and her children of properties to which they are entitled under the MoU. I am appalled at the extent to which you have strayed from the path of our noble father,” Sharmila wrote in her public letter while also criticising Reddy’s intervention in her political career, claiming that it was “absurd” of him to suggest that she sign a clause that binds her from speaking against him or their cousin Avinash from public platforms.
Reddy, on the other hand, claimed in his letter that despite his affection, Sharmila made several false statements publicly which caused personal disrepute. He wrote: “In view of this and other actions undertaken by you, it makes me wonder why there should be any love and affection or fondness towards you”.
It seems that the family saga is unravelling like an endless ball of yarn as speaking to reporters in Vijayawada, a teary-eyed Sharmila said: “God is watching, and justice will prevail”. In a three-page letter to YSR supporters, she also alleged that “all family assets Jagan claims as his own are family assets” and she has not received a single asset legally due to her.
The beginning of this feud can be traced back to 2021 when owing to a fallout between the two, Sharmila had gone ahead and floated her own party, the YSR Telangana Party. The Party, however, later merged with the Congress just before the 2024 elections, with Sharmila being crowned the chief of the Andhra Pradesh Congress. The feud came to light before the public eye when Sharmila started attacking her own brother who was then the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. She said her brother’s outlook changed significantly upon becoming the chief minister in 2019, when he suggested that the family should part ways. “Within a month of taking office, he proposed that we separate, insisting that separation was inevitable. He proposed a 60-40 split, which my mother also found unfair,” recounted Sharmila.
Sharmila also claims that she has been holding on to the MoU for more than five years without receiving any asset from the same and that she has refrained from disclosing it to the media or courts only out of the respect that she carries for the YSR family’s honour. She has further claimed that the reason for these letters to finally come out before the public is also attributable to Reddy whose actions have caused immense distress to their mother while also affecting the morale of the YSR supporters.
The YSRCP spokesperson and former MLA Rachamallu Sivaprasad Reddy, on the other hand, has criticised Sharmila and accused her of conspiring against their chief Jagan Mohan Reddy’s political career and aligning with their rivals, Chandrababu Naidu and TDP MLA Paritala Sunitha, in the pursuit of power. He also said that Reddy retains the love and affection that he had for his sister which is the exact reason why he offered her a share even in his self-acquired assets. As per the spokesperson, Reddy’s appeal to the court was only due to certain unavoidable circumstances and not to stake his claim on the family assets.
The matter it seems is only unfolding like the peeling of an onion and it might bring with it more tears and anguish. How the siblings sort their saga only time will tell!
—The author is an Advocate-on-Record practising in the Supreme Court, Delhi High Court and all district courts and tribunals in Delhi