The Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned its previous judgment, relieving the DMRC from paying over Rs 8,000 crore to Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd, a Reliance Infrastructure firm, as per a 2017 arbitral award. Responding to the curative plea filed by the DMRC against the 2021 ruling, a special bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud acknowledged the error of the top court in overturning the Delhi High Court verdict.
This move came after a division bench of the Delhi High Court had already annulled the arbitral award against the DMRC in 2019.
“By setting aside the Delhi High Court judgement, this court (SC) restored a patently illegal award which saddled a public utility with an exorbitant liability,” said the bench which also comprised justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant.
The bench highlighted that previous Supreme Court rulings in the case led to a “miscarriage of justice”, prompting the exercise of curative jurisdiction.
The verdict ordered the refund of amounts deposited by the DMRC to date and reinstated the parties to their positions as of the pronouncement of the Delhi High Court verdict.
The 2017 arbitral award amounted to Rs 7,200 crore, with accrued interest and charges inflating the sum to over Rs 8,000 crore.
On February 20, the Supreme Court reserved its decision on the DMRC’s curative plea challenging the dismissal of its review petition against the Rs 8,000 crore arbitral award favoring DAMEPL.
Reliance Infrastructure Limited, owned by Anil Ambani and the parent company of DAMEPL, criticized the DMRC’s curative plea against the Supreme Court’s decisions as a “whole-sale trial by ambush.”
The appeal and the review petitions of the DMRC, challenging the arbitral award asking it to pay Rs 8,000 crore to DAMEPL, were dismissed by the top court earlier.
The DMRC challenged the arbitral award on grounds, including that the notice of October 8, 2012 issued by DAMEPL terminating the concessionaire agreement related to running the airport metro line in the national capital was “illegal”.
The DMRC had filed the curative plea in August 2022 against the dismissal of its review plea by the top court in 2021.
After the dismissal of the plea of DMRC, the Reliance firm had moved the Delhi High Court seeking execution of the arbitral award.
In May 2017, an arbitral tribunal ruled in favour of the DAMEPL, which had pulled out of running the Airport Express metro line over safety issues, and accepted its claim that running the operations on the line was not viable due to structural defects in the viaduct through which the trains would pass.
Earlier, the court had noted that the total amount of the award with interest till February 14, 2022 was Rs 8,009.38 crore. Of this, a sum of Rs 1,678.42 crore has been paid by the DMRC and an amount of Rs 6,330.96 crore is still due.