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SC declines injunction to media on Hindenburg report

The apex court junks a plea seeking gag on the media from reporting on the report on Adani group.

SC declines injunction to media on Hindenburg report

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The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea seeking to gag media from reporting US based short seller Hindenburg’s report on Adani group and the matters arising from it as court said that ‘Won’t injunct media ever’.

The petitioner advocate M L Sharma had sought to injunct the media from reporting Hindenburg-Adani matter and the issues arising  from it till court pronounced its order on the setting up an expert committee to be headed by a former top court judge to probe the entire matter including making recommendations for plugging gaps in the stock market regulatory mechanism to protect the investors interest.  He said that the media should be restrained till the court passes its order reserved on February 17.

Rejecting the application by advocate Sharma to restrain the media, a bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice P S Narasimha and Justice J B Pardiwala said, “We are not going to issue any injunction to the media.”

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Having said this, the court said that it will pronounce its order reserved on February 17 shortly.

While reserving order on February 17, for setting up of an expert committee headed by a former top court judge to probe into US based short seller Hindenburg’s report on Adani group that led to stock market meltdown of Adani Group’s shares whipping out lakhs of crores of rupees of investors, the top court had said that it wants to have “full transparency” in the inquiry by an expert committee.

The court had said that theve3xpert committee will also make recommendations to put in place a robust regulatory mechanism to prevent any loss tom investors in future.

PIL petitioner advocate Sharma has filed an application seeking to restrain media from carrying any statement against the listed companies including Adani group of the companies unless pre-verified by the SEBI.

An allegation without being verified by SEBI is dangerous and it cannot be allowed to be released in any manner by the media, advocate Sharma has said in his application.

Top court had said this as it refused to go by the names suggested by the Centre to be included in the expert committee saying that they don’t want the expert committee to appear to be a government appointed committee.

The bench said that the people should have full confidence in the committee.

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