AG’s notice to newspaper

NEW DELHI, DEC 10: Attorney General J Sorabjee has served a legal notice to the Asian Age, charging that two articles that appeared in th...

NEW DELHI, DEC 10: Attorney General J Sorabjee has served a legal notice to the Asian Age, charging that two articles that appeared in the newspaper headlined, “Biased Soli opinion for Chhabria in SEBI matter” and “Sorabjee favoured Kishore Chhabria sham loan fraud”, were false, malicious and defamatory.

The notice demands an apology before Saturday, or warns that Sorabjee will be launching legal proceedings against the newspaper. It alleges that the newspaper’s special correspondent appears to have performed a hatchet job “at the behest and for the benefit of a powerful franchise of the Bangalore and Calcutta publications of the Asian Age, who is a business rival of the Chhabrias, in an attempt to influence SEBI.”

There was no breach of the Law Officers Rules or any Code of Conduct nor has there been any impropriety on the part of Sorabjee in giving an opinion on issues arising between private parties, and which does not involve the Government or any Public Sector Undertakings, thenotice pointed out.

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The opinion given by Sorabjee was about the interpretation of certain provisions of the Company Law and the Take Over Regulations, in respect of disputes between the two parties. Two former CJIs and eminent counsel including P Chidambaram had rendered opinions to M D Chhabria, which are on the same lines as of Sorabjee. On the other hand, former CJI, P N Bhagwati (who is Chairman of the SEBI Takeover Review Committee) has given an opinion which is against the Chhabrias and supports the Mallaya Group. These facts were not brought out in the report. Nor did the writer make any attempt to elicit Sorabjee’s version before writing against a high constitutional functionary.

Today several former law officers and legal experts including V M Tarkunde, Shanti Bhushan, K K Venugopal, Ashok Desai, Rajendra Sachar, K Parasaran, Harish Salve and Gopal Subramaniam deplored the orchestrated campaign to cast baseless aspersions on the Attorney General, “who has an impeccable record of unquestionableindependence and integrity.”