Bezos-Biyani case: Supreme Court to hear Amazon-Future Group’s plea on Jan 11

A bench comprising Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli, which had earlier sought small written submissions from parties to the litigation in place of truckload of bulky documents, again expressed displeasure on Wednesday over the written notes submitted by Future Group.

Purpose of our last direction was that you circulate the written note well in advance so that we can read them earlier. I got this from FRL at 10 pm... Today morning, we received it from another party, the bench said.

It then referred to the sequence and content of the written note by saying, We cannot make out anything. There is no connectivity with the submissions... This isn’t a way to do it.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the Future group, said, May I suggest, I will dictate a note today myself and submit by today evening, and it may be taken up tomorrow.

The bench then said if there was no urgency then the matter will be listed for hearing on January 11. The parties agreed to it.

The apex court was hearing a fresh petition of Future Group against the Delhi High Court’s recent order declining its plea for stay on an arbitration tribunal decision refusing to interfere with the SIAC’s EA which restrained it from going ahead with the Rs 24,731 crore merger deal with Reliance Retail.

The SIAC, in the EA, had granted relief to US e-commerce major Amazon by restraining the Future from going ahead with the Rs 24,731 crore merger deal of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail. Amazon had dragged Future Group to arbitration at SIAC in October last year, arguing that FRL had violated their contract by entering into the deal with rival Reliance.