SPLIT WIDE OPEN Court motion allows patriarch to transfer his shares in Raymond; Madhupati Singhania may challenge order
Vijaypat Singhania, chairman emeritus of Raymond Group, has won the first round in a case filed by four of his grandchildren who have challenged a family settlement of 1998 between their father Madhupati Singhania and grandfather.
The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a plea for interim relief to the children of the Singapore-based estranged son of the Raymond owner. Their lawsuit claiming right on ancestral property will continue.
The children of Madhupati and Anuradha Singhania -Ananya, 29, Rasaalika, 26, Tarini, 20, and Raivat Hari, 18 -have moved the court, claiming that their rights as minors were not recognised in the 1998 settlement and seeking their rights to ancestral wealth that includes Raymond.
In their interim motion they had appealed to the high court to restrain Vijaypat Singhania from transferring assets or creating any third party right on the family wealth till the court decides on the issues.
Justice Gautam Patel on Friday, however, has dismissed the motion. This means Vijaypat Singhania is free to transfer his stake in Raymond Group to whoever he wants to.
On February 9, Singhania had already transferred around 37.17% his shares in Raymond to his son Gautam Hari Singhania, chairman and managing director of Raymond. The valuation of this stake is little more than . 1,000 crore.` Details of Friday's order were not immediately available as the Bombay High Court had not yet uploaded a copy of the order on its website at the time of filing this report.
Nivedita Sharma, special counsel representing Madhupati Singhania in the case, hinted that they may challenge the high court order. “We were not given enough opportunities to argue the matter, hence challenging the order is natural,“ she told ET.“However, we will still wait for the order before taking any decision,“ Sharma said.
Sharmila Deshmukh, advocate representing the four grandchildren of Vijaypat Singhania, said everything will be decided after studying the entire order.
People close to the development said that in 1998, when Madhupati Singhania parted ways with his father and younger brother Gautam Hari Singhania following his differences over business management, he had signed a family agreement (FA), relinquishing his and his children's rights on the family fortune and shifted to Singapore. Madhupati, however, argued in the court that the family agreement is not registered and is one sided. Hence it's void and doesn't hold any ground in the court of law, he said. Madhupati also told the court that while moving to Singapore, he had transferred his power of attorney to his father-in-law Dev Kumar Agarwal, but his father Vijaypat took it away in 2009. He has sought the court's intervention to revoke that power of attorney .
Their case was filed on Febru ary 4, days before Singhania senior transferred a big chunk of his shares in Raymond to Gautam Hari Singhania. “This would help in maintaining the continuity of management and align the ownership interest,“ the company had said in a statement to stock exchanges then.
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