Two of the judges on Reliance matters have recently recused themselves on the grounds of conflict of interest. With the ownership of Reliance shares becoming a matter of some inconvenience to sitting Judges of the Supreme Court, Bar & Bench takes a look at the data revealed by the recent disclosure of assets by 21 Judges of the SC.

The long-running dispute between the Ambani brothers does not appear to have affected the confidence of the judges in the profitability of Reliance enterprises. Out of the 21 sitting Justices, 20 declared their assets on November 2. Justice B.N. Agrawal, who retired on October 15, also voluntarily published his assets on the Supreme Court website.

A study of the published list of assets shows that 16 of the 21 Judges invest in the stock markets directly or indirectly through Mutual Funds and other forms of investment. 

All of the judges with Reliance stocks appear to be long-time shareholders; the pattern of their holding indicates that most of them were holding these shares prior to the demerger of Reliance Industries Limited into Reliance Communication, RNRL, Reliance Energy (which later became Reliance Infrastructure) and Reliance Capital.

Justices R.V. Raveendran, Dalveer Bhandari, D.K. Jain, V.S. Sirpurkar, Aftab Alam, Mukundakam Sharma, H.L. Dattu and B.S. Chauhan have equity investments in both the brothers' companies. Justice Panchal holds an equity investment only in Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Petroleum. Justices Katju and Ganguly hold mutual fund investments through the Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Capital. Justices Kapadia, Tarun Chatterjee, R.M. Lodha, Deepak Verma, Cyriac Joseph and B.N. Agrawal hold stocks and mutual funds of various other financial institutions.

Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, along with Justices Altamas Kabir, Sudershan Reddy, Sathasivam and G.S. Singhvi do not hold shares or stocks in any company whatsoever.

Whatever may be the case, Reliance investments have returned more than 100 percent in the last 5 years, and Reliance stocks remain a good investment decision.