Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appointed to represent Tata Trusts, said on Sunday he was entering the fray with "sadness and regret" as the issues could not be resolved amicably.
In a post on X, Singhvi said the fundamental rights of shareholder-owners could not be nullified in the manner in which they had been.
"Having worked closely with Ratan Tata earlier, being aware of his legacy and not only knowing personally all the principal actors on both sides in the current so-called Tata dispute but also having deep, genuine and abiding respect for and excellent equations with all of them, my first reaction, as I enter the fray as the lead lawyer for one side, is one of sadness and regret that these issues could not be solved amicably," the lawyer said.
The Tata Sons board has backed a further five-year term for Natarajan Chandrasekaran, in opposition to Noel Tata, who has challenged the validity of the decision by the Trusts.
The board has also favoured moving ahead with a public listing after the Reserve Bank of India rejected the company's application to surrender its registration as an upper-layer non-banking financial company (NBFC).
Tata Trusts, which collectively control about 66% of Tata Sons, have opposed the listing, with chairman Noel Tata urging the company to explore alternatives.
Singhvi said stultifying shareholder-ownership rights would spell doomsday for corporate governance across hundreds of Indian companies.
He said that to stymie democratic intra-trust decision-making by Tata Trusts by putting a sudden and completely unwarranted fetter on even convening a meeting is another matter of patent legality.
"Rupturing the over hundred years of Tata Trust and Tata Sons established hyphenated relationship and divorcing one from the other seems unthinkable," Singhvi said.
"Ignoring the unvarying precondition of trust unanimity in voting & the clear veto in provisions applied without cavil for decades appears patently unjustified. Sadly, the Supreme Court judgement in Tata-Mistry which clearly gave Tata Trusts primacy in the relationship with Tata Sons, upheld the special Articles in this regard in the Tata Sons articles and spoke of the fiduciary duty to millions of Indians, seems to have been selectively forgotten," he added.
Singhvi said that, in the absence of collegiality and conviviality, these and many other related issues could only have legal solutions.
(With inputs from PTI)
