Justice R V Raveendran disclosed that he holds shares of both Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries and Anil Ambani-run RNRL before he started hearing their gas dispute as part of a three-judge bench. Raveendran said he holds equal number of shares in RIL and RNRL and said if anyone had objections to his hearing the matter,he would like to recuse himself. Senior counsel Ram Jethmalani,appearing for RNRL,said that Justice Raveendran was most suited to hear the matter while Salve wanted the disclosure to be recorded. The disclosure comes in the wake of Justice S H Kapadia's outburst in the court earlier this month on allegations of conflict-of-interest made during the hearing of the Vedanta mining case. Kapadia,who as part of the Special Forest Bench heard a petition challenging mining of hills in Orissa by Sterlite Industries,had objected to the allegations in the media that he had failed to disclose his interest in the matter. He said that he had disclosed that he held shares in Sterlite,a unit of London Stock Exchange-listed Vedanta. However,no one objected to his being part of the bench. Clause 11 of the Restatement of Judicial Values adopted by the SC judges in 1997 says: "A judge shall not hear and decide a matter in which a company in which he holds shares is concerned unless he has disclosed his interest and no objection to his hearing and deciding the matter is raised."
