Tata Sons moves Supreme Court against NCLAT order restoring Cyrus Mistry as group chairman

Tata Sons moved the Supreme Court on Thursday challenging the restoration of Cyrus Mistry as the executive chairman of the group by National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) last month.

Mistry was restored as the Executive Chairperson of the Tata Sons by the NCLAT on December 18 last year, three years after he was sacked at a board meeting. 

In its petition filed before the top court, Tata Sons has sought a stay on the NCLAT order.

Earlier, reacting to the reinstatement of Mistry, Tata Sons had said that the company law tribunal's order appeared to even go beyond the specific reliefs sought by the sacked executive. 

The order, which also declared the appointment of a new chairman N Chandrasekaran as illegal, has to take effect after four weeks.

Mistry had called the judgment "not a personal victory" but a "victory for the principles of good governance".

In a statement issued after the NCLAT verdict, Mistry said, "Today's judgment is not a personal victory for me, but is a victory for the principles of good governance and minority shareholder rights. For over fifty years, the Mistry family, as the significant minority shareholder of Tata Sons, has always endeavoured to play the role of a responsible guardian of an institution that the entire nation is proud of."

Mistry was chosen by a selection panel to head the Tata Group after Ratan Tata had announced his retirement in 2012. However, he was ousted from his post four years later, when in 2016 a board of Tata Group's holding company, Tata Sons, voted to remove Mistry as the chairperson and named Ratan Tata as interim chairman. Natarajan Chandrasekaran was later named the new chair. 

A two-judge panel of NCLAT termed Ratan Tata’s actions against Mistry as oppressive and declared the appointment of a new chairman as illegal.