Corporate behemoth Reliance Industries Monday termed as completely baseless reports that its independent directors or their relatives had a pecuniary relationship with the company.

Reliance, which is in the midst of a bitter ownership wrangle, said baseless aspersions were being cast on three independent directors of the company's board.

A newspaper report Monday had said Reliance's three independent directors - D.V. Kapur, S. Venkitaramanan and Y.P. Trivedi - or their relatives had a pecuniary relationship with the company and its associate firms.

The Reliance statement said a section of the media had allowed itself to be used for spreading misinformation about Reliance, its associate companies, board members and other functionaries.

"These baseless allegations need to be dismissed with the contempt they deserve because knowledgeable people, financial experts and corporate analysts can easily see through the utter falsehood of this tirade," it said.

"However, the company has been issuing factual statements from time to time to ensure that laypersons are not misled by this campaign."

Reliance said ever since the appointment of the independent directors, they had not been paid any amount by the company, its promoters or any person involved in the management or any Reliance subsidiary.

It said there had been no violation of any norms as stipulated by the capital market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

"The item casts baseless aspersions on three distinguished members of the board of directors of Reliance Industries," said the company.

A rift between brothers Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, who control the diversified operations of the Reliance group with annual sales of Rs.800 billion ($17.5 billion), has been raging for the past few months.

While Mukesh holds the office of chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, the younger Ambani sibling is vice chairman and managing director.

Reliance Industries has interests in a wide spectrum of industrial sectors like petrochemicals, refinery and telecom.