Shillong: The Supreme Court on Thursday shut down a petition from Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra. She demanded that the Securities and Exchange Board of India make the ultimate beneficial owners of Alternative Investment Funds and Foreign Portfolio Investors public. Justices B.V. Nagarathna, R. Mahadevan, and D.K. Upadhyaya tossed the case. They ruled the court lacks the power to force these disclosures without a standing law or regulatory framework.
The court did grant Moitra permission to take her complaints directly to the Union government and SEBI. Advocate Prashant Bhushan argued for the petitioner. He told the bench that heavy foreign money flows into Indian companies while the real owners stay hidden. He claimed this lack of transparency triggers risks like stock market manipulation and potential SEBI rule breaches. He pointed out that other nations already require this data.
The bench pushed back hard on the legal grounds for their involvement. They questioned if a writ of mandamus could force action where no policy exists. As the court stated: "In the absence of any such framework, this Court cannot exercise its discretion and issue a writ of mandamus to respondents (authorities) to mandate a full public disclosure."
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed the request. He accused the petitioner of trying to block foreign capital from entering India. Bhushan denied the claim, insisting that revealing ownership would not hurt honest investors. The court order noted that while AIFs and FPIs already report data to SEBI and custodians for oversight, the specific public disclosure Moitra wants remains outside the current legal rules.
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