New Delhi, Dec. 4 -- Company Outsider is a weekly newsletter by Sundeep Khanna. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your email inbox.

"The attempt and not the deed confounds us," says Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's classic play Macbeth. Sometimes it's not just what you do, but why you do it that raises eyebrows.

Mint's latest investigation into the voting patterns of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is a perfect example of that. As per the story, LIC hasn't rejected a single shareholder resolution from Reliance Industries or Adani Group companies over the past two-and-a-half years, even as it routinely rejected similar proposals at other firms. Moreover, it seems to have violated its own published voting policy by app...