- India's first admitted corporate class action under the Companies Act ended abruptly by Supreme Court order
- Supreme Court referred dispute between Jindal Poly Films and minority shareholders to arbitration
- NCLT had admitted the landmark class action under Section 245 after nearly two years of litigation
India's first admitted corporate class action under the Companies Act has come to an abrupt end before its merits could be tested, with the Supreme Court referring the dispute between Jindal Poly Films Ltd. and its minority shareholders to arbitration just months after the National Company Law Tribunal allowed the landmark case to proceed.
The order closes what was widely seen as a watershed moment for shareholder activism in India. The petition, filed in March 2024 and admitted by the NCLT in February 2026 after nearly two years of litigation, marked the first time an Indian tribunal formally admitted a class action under Section 245 of the Companies Act, a provision enacted more than a decade ago to strengthen minority shareholder rights.
A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Atul S. Chandurkar accepted a joint request by both sides to resolve the dispute through arbitration, appointed former Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava as the sole arbitrator and set aside the NCLT and NCLAT orders that had held the class action to be maintainable.
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The petition was brought by minority shareholders led by Ankit Jain, collectively holding 4.99% of Jindal Poly's equity, alleging that promoter-linked entities benefited from undervalued transfers of investments in Jindal Powertech and Jindal Thermal, loan write-offs and other related-party transactions that caused losses exceeding ₹2,500 crore to the company and public shareholders. Jindal Poly has denied the allegations.
The tribunal rulings had been viewed as pathbreaking because they expanded the scope of Section 245, holding that shareholders could challenge completed transactions and seek remedies benefiting the company itself. Those findings now stand erased after the Supreme Court's order.
The dispute will now be decided behind closed doors through arbitration rather than in what could have become India's first full-fledged corporate class action trial, leaving unanswered several legal questions around the scope of minority shareholder remedies under Section 245.
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