Delhi HC dismisses plea challenging appointment of Sambit Patra, Shashi Shankar to ONGC

The Delhi High Court today dismissed the petition filed by Energy Watchdog seeking cancellation of the appointments of BJP Spokesperson Dr. Sambit Patra and Shashi Shankar to the board of ONGC..Earlier this year, Patra was appointed as a Non-Official Director (NOD) while Shankar was made the Chairman & Managing Director (CMD) of India’s largest oil and gas producer ONGC..The plea filed, by Advocate and social activist Prashant Bhushan, had challenged the appointments on primarily two grounds, namely:.That Shashi Shankar (appointed as CMD) has a tainted past and allegations of corruption have been levelled against him.That Sambit Patra (appointed as Non-Official Director) is the national spokesperson of BJP and therefore cannot be an independent director of a company whose promoter is the government..It was also contended that Patra does not have the domain knowledge necessary to be a director and his name is absent from the data bank of eligible persons willing to act as Independent Directors, which is required to be prepared for the purpose of Section 150 of the Companies Act, 2013..Appearing for the Centre, ASG Sanjay Jain had submitted that the petition is not maintainable because it was filed as quo warranto. Senior Advocate Jayant Bhushan argued for the petitioners..After hearing arguments at length, the Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar had reserved the order on the maintainability of the petition on Thursday..The Court held that the challenge to the appointment of Shashi Shankar premised on the fact that he was under suspension or was facing disciplinary proceedings, is completely untenable and devoid of any factual or legal merit and has to be rejected..With regard to the appointment of Dr. Sambit Patra, the Court observed that,.“Given the wide diversity in specializations, availability of knowledge, experience, areas of education as well as the multifarious concerns required to be addressed by corporations, it cannot today be contended or held that a person must necessarily possess knowledge and experience only of the business or activity which is being undertaken by the company to whose Board an appointment of an independent director is being contemplated..It needs no elaboration that professionals as doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants would undoubtedly make value additions in any domain or field.”.The Court held that Patra could be considered under as a ‘Person of eminence’ by the competent authority. It was also stated that the challenge to his appointment on account of procedural violation is also unfounded and has to be rejected. The Court observed that,.“There is nothing in the statutory scheme which prohibits or excludes persons who do not feature in the data bank from being appointed as the Independent Directors to the Board.”.With regard to Patra’s affiliation to the ruling party, the Court stated that,.“To doubt the independence of respondent no. 6 (Patra) to discharge the duties and functions of a Non-Official Director on the Board of Directors by the respondent no.6 merely because he is a spokesperson of the ruling party or to hold that he would be unable to keep the interest of the ONGC in mind would be highly inappropriate.” .On the question of jurisdiction of the court to issue a writ of quo warranto, the Court held that it neither found any procedural violation nor contravention of any statutory provision on the part of the respondents and therefore, no writ is warranted..Read Order:.Image taken from here:.Sambit Patra.Shashi Shankar