The Bombay High Court on Monday sought responses from the Reserve Bank on a plea by Chanda Kochhar challenging her termination as the chief executive and managing director of ICICI Bank, months after she voluntarily left the second largest private sector lender.
The high-profile ex-banker had on November 30 moved the Bombay High Court challenging “termination” of her employment by ICICI Bank which also denied her remuneration and clawed back all the bonuses and stock options between April 2009 and March 2018 for her alleged role in granting out of turn loans worth Rs 3,250 crore to the Videocon Group which benefitted her husband Deepak Kochhar.
Her petition claimed that her termination on January 30, 2019, came months after the bank approved her voluntary resignation on October 5, 2018 and therefore the termination is “illegal, untenable, and unsustainable in law.”
Kochhar landed in troubled late March 2018 when the Indian Express reported the details about her role in Videocon Group getting Rs 3,250 crore loan from ICICI Bank out of turn in 2012 which soon after invested 10 percent of the loan in Nupower, a company owned by her husband Deepak.
The High Court direction came after Kochhar filed an amended petition on Monday seeking to make RBI a party to the case. She was allowed to amend her first plea on December 2.
A division Bench of justices Ranjit More and SP Tavade allowed her to implead RBI and directed the apex bank to file its reply by December 16.