Billionaire Ambani brothers in legal showdown
India's billionaire Ambani brothers were set to square off in India's highest court later Tuesday in a bitter showdown that has riveted the nation.
The two have drafted India's top lawyers to argue a case over gas supplies that pits the country's biggest private sector company Reliance Industries Ltd, led by Mukesh Ambani, against Reliance Natural Resources Ltd, headed by Anil.
A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan is due to hear the case in which billions of dollars are at stake.
The row stems from a family pact splitting the Reliance assets after the 2002 death of their father Dhirubhai, who built a corporate colossus that straddled India's economy from telecommunications to energy.
The case involving the nation's richest gas field was expected to get underway in the Supreme Court at around 0830 GMT.
Anil, 50, is demanding the honouring of a 2005 settlement brokered by their mother that would allow Reliance Natural Resources to buy gas from Reliance Industries at 44 percent below the government-set rate.
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