New Delhi, November 17
For the first time, the Supreme Court today agreed to have a fresh look at its recent judgement on HPCL and BPCL sell-off cases holding that the privatisation of PSUs created by legislation required the prior approval of Parliament.
Hearing a petition challenging the disinvestment of rail coach manufacturing company Jessop and Co, a Bench comprising Chief Justice V.N Khare and Justice S.B Sinha observed that “we are primarily concerned whether disinvestment requires Parliamentary approval and whether it is legally permitted.”
This observation came after Attorney General Soli J. Sorabjee contended that though many decisions for privatising PSUs had been taken prior to the September 16 judgement, halting the privatisation of oil PSUs for want of prior Parliamentary approval, these have now been challenged in many High Courts relying on the HPCL judgement.
“The decision of the Apex Court was not to be applied to all cases where disinvestment decision had been taken prior to the judgement,” he said adding that certain observations in the HPCL judgement required to be examined afresh as they had far reaching consequences.
Meanwhile, the Apex Court stayed the proceedings before various High Courts on petitions challenging the disinvestment of Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL) and Burns Standard Corporation Ltd (BSCL) as the Union Government today sought the transfer of these petitions to the Supreme Court for an authoritative pronouncement.
