So, the battle in the Supreme Court is over. But we know the Ambani battle is not over. Far from it.

The top court shut the door on one issue – only the Indian government, and nobody else including either of the Ambani brothers, can set prices for the natural gas owned by the people of India.  But the judgment did not rule on several other issues. Even on the family Memorandum of Understanding between Anil and Mukesh, while it said the agreement is not legally or technically valid, Anil Ambani, who presumably has access to a full copy of the judgment, said the court had held that the MoU “is the guiding force and the basis of the scheme of arrangements for business reorganization of (undivided) RIL.”

I will come to the latter in a while, but where does the primary ruling leave Anil, already the loser in the way the late Dhirubhai Ambani’s business empire has been carved out?

Anil has said he will not file a review petition in the Supreme Court. This was expected given the fact that the court has unambiguously ruled on the primary question: Anil Ambani cannot claim the right to receive the natural gas at the subsidized price just because his older brother agreed to in a personal MoU.

Even though the Supreme Court also asked the two brothers and their companies – Reliance Industries Limited, controlled by Mukesh Ambani, and Reliance Natural Resources Limited, controlled by Anil – to renegotiate the gas deal, there is little room for optimism. Over only a short period of time, post-2005, the two have infused enormous bitterness into their relationship. As one newspaper report said, even though the two live in the same building, both take care – through their retinue of staff — never to cross paths when entering or exiting. This level of animosity is unfathomable.  At one time, after their father’s death, Mukesh fancied looking upon his younger brother as a “son.”

In the circumstances, the Ambani brothers will surely go through the motions of negotiations but an amicable outcome would be a surprise. Some analysts speculate that the changed gas requirements for RNRL would make a solution possible, if not easier, but it perhaps doesn’t take into account the nature of the relationship between the brothers. Mukesh is widely seen as the intractable one, presumably because he is in a sweet spot with nothing to gain by selling gas to his younger brother, maybe even at whatever price.

What are Anil’s options?

He, of course, could consider other options to run the proposed power plant at Dadra for which he seeks gas. But it will be curious to see if he will consider other legal options for redress under the MoU, which, to repeat, the Supreme Court apparently called “the guiding force and the basis of the scheme of arrangements for business reorganization of (undivided) RIL.” In other words, could he use the MoU to avenge his obvious losses? Will he make the MoU public? Can he sue his older brother for breach of contract, if nothing else? In many countries, this would be a ready option but in India, amid all the secrecy, one just doesn’t know.