New Delhi, May 28: The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the delisting of ICICI Securities from the stock exchanges, rejecting a plea by an individual investor who challenged the share valuation process as being unfair.

The investor, Manu Rishi Gupta, had questioned the delisting on the ground that a reverse book building mechanism might have resulted in a better price for shareholders.

ICICI Securities was delisted in March last year, and it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of ICICI Bank.

Gupta’s counsel contended in the apex court that the delisting of ICICI Securities was done in an opaque and rushed manner and termed it “shocking”.

The counsel for ICICI Securities informed the Supreme Court that Gupta continued to indulge in buying and selling of shares of ICICI Securities, including as recently as August 2024 which undermined his claims of unfair treatment.

Nearly 72 per cent of shareholder votes were cast in favour of the scheme of arrangement for the merger of ICICI Securities with its promoter ICICI Bank, the private sector lender had stated in a regulatory filing with the stock exchanges.

The voting was conducted after a National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) directive in February 2024, which mandated a shareholder meeting to approve the plan. The meeting was attended by 161 equity shareholders including authorised representatives.

Earlier, in March this year, the National Compay Law Apellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had upheld the delisting of ICICI Securities Ltd from the stock exchanges, dismissing the pleas filed by shareholders Quantum Mutual Fund and individual investor Manu Rishi Gupta against the move.

Quantum Mutual Fund had approached NCLAT in September to oppose ICICI Securities’ delisting, citing concerns over its impact on minority shareholders. Earlier, the Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) had approved the delisting, dismissing the fund’s objections.

ICICI Securities in June 2023 announced its plan to delist and merge with its parent company, ICICI Bank Ltd. Shareholders approved the plan in March 2024. As part of the delisting, Under the proposed share-swap arrangement, shareholders were to receive 67 shares of ICICI Bank for every 100 shares of ICICI Securities.

New Delhi, May 28: Microsoft and Yotta Data Services, India’s leading sovereign cloud infrastructure and platform services provider, on Wednesday partnered to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in India.

The partnership enables Microsoft and Yotta to engage with IndiaAI Mission participants, government agencies, IITs, startups, enterprises, and software development companies to leapfrog AI innovation.

Microsoft said it would bring its AzureAI services to Shakti Cloud, Yotta’s AI cloud platform, to offer cutting-edge AI capabilities to developers, startups, enterprises, and public sector organisations across India.

“Our partnership with Yotta to power Shakti Cloud will help unlock AI innovation at scale. Microsoft is honoured to play its part in helping the country realise its AI ambitions through innovation that reflect India’s unique needs and priorities,” said Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India and South Asia.

India is already among the top global markets on AI adoption and return on investment. Together with Yotta, we will continue to help India become an AI-first nation, securely and responsibly, he added.

As of May, IndiaAI Mission has received over 500 proposals for developing indigenous AI models.

Shakti Cloud customers will benefit from a rich ecosystem and vast catalogue of foundational LLMs and SLMs available on Azure AI Foundry to develop, deploy and scale at the speed of AI.

Built-in safety tools, content filters, groundedness detection, and copyright protection will empower organisations to build and scale AI responsibly. As a global provider of software, infrastructure, and cloud services, Microsoft runs on trust and enables trustworthy AI by prioritising security, privacy, and safety.

“This partnership is a key step forward towards India’s AI self-reliance and digital transformation, and we are excited to be able to support Indian enterprises in their journey towards AI excellence with a full gamut of offerings,” said Sunil Gupta, Co-founder, CEO and Managing Director, Yotta Data Services.

The combined strength of Microsoft’s services backed by Yotta’s infrastructure gives access to some of the best capabilities to support AI development in the country.

“It will make cutting-edge AI capabilities accessible for Indian enterprises of all sizes and give a huge boost to driving the nation’s AI ambitions,” Gupta noted.

In January this year, Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella announced a collaboration with IndiaAI, a division of Digital India Corporation, to advance AI and emerging technologies in the country, and established AI Centre of Excellence and AI Productivity Labs to foster inclusive growth.

Kolkata, May 28: After West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the notification of fresh recruitment for teaching and non-teaching jobs will be issued on May 30 and the “untainted” teachers, who lost jobs following a Supreme Court order last month, will have to appear for the written examination, questions and loopholes have started surfacing over her announcement.

The fact that the Chief Minister’s announcement about the fresh recruitment process and the state government’s persuasion on the review petition in the Supreme Court order will go on simultaneously has led to concerns.

The question that is surfacing on this count is whether the state government and West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) have submitted the segregated lists of “untainted” and “tainted” candidates along with their respective review petitions.

The opposition parties and the legal experts have said that since the inability of the state government and the commission to furnish the segregated lists was the main reason for both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court to cancel the entire panel of 25,753 jobs, any review petition without that segregated list is bound to pose questions on how serious is the state government to protect the jobs of the “untainted” teachers.

The Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, has already challenged the Chief Minister to publicly clarify whether the state government and WBSSC have submitted the segregated list along with the review petition.

“The Chief Minister is highly optimistic about the outcome of the review petition. So she should clarify whether she had submitted the segregated list along with the review petitions. Otherwise, it will be evident that the state is just conducting a time-killing exercise by projecting the review petition,” Adhikari said.

The second question that is arising over the Chief Minister’s announcements and clarifications on Tuesday is that while she stressed mainly that part of the Supreme Court order that details the fresh recruitment, she virtually avoided that portion of the order which details the steps to be adopted by the government to ensure the termination of services of the “tainted” ones and also recover the money they received as salaries.

“How could the state government abide by one part of the apex court and ignore the other part? Instead, on Tuesday, the Chief Minister said she would try to protect even the jobs of those who were not included among the ‘untainted’ ones. Does not this hint at another corruption?” questioned senior advocate and the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya.

He also questioned the legal sanctity of the Chief Minister’s claims that the fresh recruitment process and the state government’s persuasion on the review petition in the Supreme Court order will go on simultaneously.

“The question is whether any scope for review prevails once the fresh recruitment process starts as per the apex court order. The Chief Minister is just using the review petition as a tool of time-killing exercise and giving false hopes to ‘untainted’ candidates,” Bhattacharya said.