The marathon final hearing that has been taking place for the past few months on a huge batch of cases filed against the merger of Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB) with DBS Bank India Limited, in 2020, is nearing completion before the Madras High Court. The Supreme Court had, in 2022, transferred all cases filed against the merger before various High Courts across the country, to the Madras High Court.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy on Monday, February 5, 2024, Senior Counsel Vijay Narayan wound up his arguments on behalf of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Thereafter, the judges adjourned the hearing to Wednesday, February 7, for hearing others, and asked Senior Counsel Satish Parasaran, representing DBS, to wind up his arguments on Thursday, February 8.
In his submissions, Mr. Narayan told the court that if there was one institution in the country that had remained blemishless in the last seven decades since Independence, it was the RBI. Therefore, there was no reason to even suspect that the RBI had any malafide intention behind the merger. “Whatever was done, was done in the best interests of the entire banking sector,” he told the Division Bench.
