The tirade unleashed by Anil Ambani against RIL executive director Nikhil Meswani for briefing the press about the “90 per cent” progress having been made in the settlement process under way with his brother Mukesh Ambani smacks of mistrust not only against his cousin but against the settlement process itself.

It is now public knowledge that negotiations between the two brothers have been going apace based on the evaluation made by family friend and ICICI bank chairman K V Kamath-- albeit with occasional derailments caused by Anil’s outbursts against the Reliance Group companies under the charge of Mukesh Ambani, especially RIL and Infocomm. And these outbursts have been invariably aired through the media, which certainly has the right to get at the facts of the case. So, what is wrong about RIL briefing the press about the progress of the negotiations?

In the first place, the observation about 90 per cent agreement having been reached was not attributed by the press to Meswani but to sources close to Mukesh Ambani. Even assuming that it was Meswani who informally briefed the press about the progress of the settlement process, there is nothing for Anil to get flared up and charge that it was “false briefing in violation of SEBI’s insider trading and fraudulent trade practices regulations.”

According to Anil’s spokesman, the deal is still stuck on the prices of shares to be exchanged between the two brothers and the cash component to be paid by Mukesh to Anil. Does this not contravene the SEBI regulations?

While Anil is himself flouting all norms by rushing to the media for everything wrong perceived by him in the Reliance Group companies--and in the process swears by the paramount interest of shareholders-- he would not let others make any observation before the media. Okay, there are still some contentious issues to be resolved. But the likely distribution of the Reliance Group companies between the two brothers in terms of the Kamath formula is fairly well known by now and widely reported in the media. Does this itself not constitute 90 per cent progress?

But why is Anil over-reacting? There are several possible answers to this question. Maybe, he is not happy with the evaluation made by Kamath with the expert help of Nimesh Kampani of J M Morgan Stanley. Or, he is feigning unhappiness to pressurize his brother to dole out more cash in exchange for his shares in the flagship company.

While Anil has every right to bargain for the best, he must remember that the maximum weight in any evaluation is attached to independent expert’s findings. It is not one’s capacity to make noises or hurl abuses at others but the hard arithmetic that prevails eventually. It is only on this principle that any sale, purchase, merger or division in the corporate world takes place. So, it is time he got into a settlement mode.

Enough dirty linen from textile giant Reliance’s cupboards has been washed in public. Most people are sick and tired of this ongoing soap opera. They want a curtain to be rung on this unseemly wrangle without further delay. Millions of shareholders of Reliance companies, too, want an early end to the feud. Then, how can Anil say that this is a family matter and none, much less Nikhil Meswani, has the right to comment. If the full-time executive director of RIL has no locus standi to do so, who else has?

It was Anil’s camp which first announced in January last through a TV channel that the process of settlement was on and would be completed before long. The Mukesh camp was at that time denying any imminent settlement. Now, the roles seems to have been reversed. But one thing is clear that the process of settlement cannot be rolled back.