Jagan Mohan Reddy and his wife YS Bharathi Reddy have recently filed a petition with the Hyderabad Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) accusing Sharmila and Vijayamma of illegally transferring shares of Saraswati Power and Industries Private Limited and said they were contesting the illegal action.
Published Oct 23, 2024 | 2:04 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 24, 2024 | 8:42 AM
YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. YS Sharmila
The bitter family feud involving former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, his sister YS Sharmila and mother Vijayamma has come out in the open.
Jagan Mohan Reddy and his wife YS Bharathi Reddy have recently filed a petition with the Hyderabad Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) accusing Sharmila and Vijayamma of illegally transferring shares of Saraswati Power and Industries Private Limited and said they were contesting the illegal action.
The couple sought an order under Section 59 of the Companies Act,2013 for nullifying the illegal transfer of the shares on 6 July, 2024 from them to the respondents viz. Sharmila, Vijayamma and others.
In the petition dated 10 September, they also sought rectification of the register of the members by reinstating the names of the petitioners viz Jagan Mohan Reddy, Bharathi as shareholders holding 74,26,294 (29.88 percent) and 40,50,000 (16.3 percent) shares, along with others.
Jagan Mohan Reddy said that “purely out of love and affection, he had harboured an intention to transfer certain properties held by him to his sister at a future date.
In pursuance of his intention, he signed an MoU on 31 August, 2019 with his mother, manifesting his intention to transfer at a future date certain properties and shares held by him and his wife in favour of Sharmila.
In furtherance of the MoU which was to take place at his continued sole discretion based on continuing “love and affection”, he had a company controlled by him — Sandur Power Company Private Ltd — transfer its entire holding in Saraswati Power — 46,71,707 shares — in favour of his mother Vijayamma.
Also Classic Realty, one of the petitioners — in which Bharati is a director — had transferred 71,50,000 shares held in Saraswati Power to Vijayamma. The condition was that Vijayamma was to hold all the shares in trust for the benefit of Sharmila.
“These assets were under attachment by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the CBI due to ongoing legal cases, the MoU explicitly stated that the transfer would only happen once the legal issues were resolved,” a source said.
The transfer of shares to Vijayamma was intended to signify the intent to effectuate its future transfer to Sharmila, after the completion of the litigation in the court. He contended that no actual transfer of shares took place to Sharmila.
He said his sister Sharmila, without gratitude and without regard to his well being conducted a series of actions that deeply hurt him. She also made several untrue and false statements publicly and also conducted actions that have not only been politically opposed to him but also are blatantly untrue and had defamed.
The former chief minister said her actions strained his relationship with her and have further resulted in the melting down of all the love and affection a brother had for his sister especially so when uncharitable aspersions were made at a personal level which are politically motivated.
Having realised there was no love left between him and her, he decided not to proceed with his expression of intent to transfer the shares and properties as envisaged under the MoU.
Till now, the rivalry between the brother and the sister was confined to the realms of political speculation. Though Sharmila, as the president of the state Congress Committee, campaigned against her brother in the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state which made it clear that they had fallen apart though she was careful enough not to admit the rivalry as being personal.
Interestingly, in the 2019 elections, Vijayamma had made an appeal to the people to elect his son to power in Andhra Pradesh. She had said that she was placing her son in the hands of the people. But in the 2024 elections, she made no such appeal and she stuck with her daughter Sharmila who had even migrated to Telangana and started her party, to carry out a campaign against the then chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
After the Assembly elections in Telangana in December last year, she joined the Congress and moved to Andhra Pradesh as president of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC).
After Jagan Mohan Reddy faced his Waterloo in the June elections, he seems to have decided to quit shadowboxing and take legal action against his sister.
He sought a transfer back of 74,26,294 equity shares from Vijayamma, 40,50,000 shares to Bharati from Vijayamma, and 12,00,000 shares to others. They also sought reinstatement of their names as shareholders of Saraswati Power Company.
In the petition filed with the NCLT, Jagan Mohan Reddy, Bharathi Reddy and Classic Realty Private Limited are the petitioners while Saraswati Power and Industries Ltd, Sharmila Reddy, YS Vijaya Rajasekhar Reddy (Vijayamma) and Janardhan Reddy Chaagari are the respondents.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
