SC rejects Kochhar’s appeal on termination
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to entertain a plea by Chanda Kochhar against her sacking as managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank Limited last year, calling it a “contractual dispute between a bank and its employee”. A bench headed by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul agreed with the reasons cited by the Bombay high court in March.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to entertain a plea by Chanda Kochhar against her sacking as managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank Limited last year, calling it a “contractual dispute between a bank and its employee”.
A bench headed by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul agreed with the reasons cited by the Bombay high court in March when Kochhar’s writ petition was dismissed for not being maintainable.
“We have seen the Bombay high court order and they have rightly said that your grievances against termination is essentially a contractual dispute between you and the bank. It concerns a private body. Just because a private bank also accepts all kinds of funds, your petition cannot become maintainable as a writ petition,” the bench told senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared for Kochhar.
Kochhar is being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate for her alleged role in granting out-of-turn loans worth ₹3,250 crore to Videocon Group, which allegedly benefitted her husband Deepak Kochhar. The FIR, which alleges corrupt practices and money laundering, also named Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot. Kocchar was sacked last year after ICICI Bank approved her voluntary resignation in October 2018.
Describing this decision as
illegal and unsustainable in law, Rohatgi sought to persuade the SC bench that since Kochhar was terminated in breach of the statutory requirement of taking prior approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the petition was legally maintainable.
Rohatgi emphasised that apart from RBI failing in its duty, Kochhar’s rights were also violated when ICICI Bank first accepted her resignation, but later terminated her and further recovered an amount of ₹7.4 crore granted to her between April 2009 and March 2018.
According to the veteran lawyer, the Supreme Court must examine the questions of law relating to her termination without prior sanction of RBI, and the authority to convert a voluntary resignation into a termination. But the bench remained unimpressed: “We are not saying that you don’t have a case or your grievances are not genuine.
But the question is if you are before the right forum. Where will your remedy lie?”
About the absence of prior approval by RBI, the bench responded that this can be an issue between the central bank and ICICI Bank as to how she had been sacked without the former’s sanction. “Howsoever, as far as you (Kochhar) are concerned, you are under a private employment,” it said.
When the bench said Kochhar could seek compensation if an appropriate forum in future decide against the bank’s decision to terminate her, Rohatgi said the dispute was not only about the money, but about her reputation, built over the years. The court, however, underlined that matters of service conditions in private banks, such as termination, cannot be entertained in writ jurisdiction and public law remedy under Article 226 of the Constitution.