Bombay High Court summons SBI chairperson

Mumbai: SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya on Wednesday appeared in Bombay high court after she was summoned due to her organisation’s legal team’s ignorance about the status of its cases.

The court summoned Ms Bhattacharya after a legal team and advocates hired by the bank appeared on January 16, 2017, to contest a case that had been dismissed in February 2016. After her appearance, the court allowed the dismissed case – a summary suit for recovery of Rs 1.51 crore – to be restored. Justice S.J. Kathawalla on Tuesday deprecated the way in which the legal team and advocates hired by SBI conducted themselves despite the court trying to accommodate their requests.

SBI had filed a summary suit against C.S. Raghoji (Bellary) and others in 2013 to recover an amount of Rs 1.51 crore. In 2015, on the request of SBI advocates to allow time for serving the report, the court granted time for the same. However when the matter came up for hearing in October 2015, no one appeared for SBI, hence the suit was placed for dismissal. In December 2015, the court granted another request for extension on the condition that if service was not completed within eight weeks, the summary suit would stand dismissed.

As SBI failed to comply, the suit was dismissed in February 2016. However as the suit was put up on the board by mistake, an advocate appeared on behalf of SBI on January 16 this year. On January 18, the SBI advocate informed the court that the managing director was present and would appear instead of the chairman which the court rejected. On the request of the advocate, the court allowed the chairman to attend in the chamber later in the day but she failed to turn up.

The SBI advocate told the court that as the chairman was out of Mumbai, they would inform the court about her availability but as they failed to do so till January 23, it was taken on board on Tuesday. “Such conduct is not expected from any litigant and/or their advocates. The conduct of all concerned is therefore, strongly deprecated,” said the Bombay high court.