Arbitral award row: Supreme Court issues notice to DAMEPL on DMRC contempt plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure Limited, on a contempt plea alleging failure on its part to refund over Rs 4,500 crore along with interest to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta and Ujjal Bhutan took note of the plea of the DMRC and sought response from DAMEPL as to why contempt proceedings be not initiated against it for not paying the money along with interest to the public carrier.

The bench has posted the contempt plea for hearing on January 20, 2025.

On April 10, the top court set aside its own judgement and held that the PSU firm was not obliged to pay over Rs 8,000 crore to the DAMEPL in pursuance of a 2017 arbitral award.

Allowing the curative plea of the DMRC against the 2021 judgement, a special bench headed by the then Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud held that the top court erred in setting aside the Delhi High Court verdict.

A division bench of the Delhi High Court, in 2019, set aside the arbitral award passed against the DMRC.

The top court asked DAMEPL to return about Rs 2,500 crore it had already received, holding the previous verdict had caused “grave miscarriage of injustice” to a public utility which was saddled with an exorbitant liability. It had said the order of the Delhi High Court division bench was a “well-considered decision” and “there was no valid basis” for the Supreme Court to interfere with it.

The interference by the apex court, in its earlier decisions, resulted in restoring a patently illegal award, it said.

“The Division Bench applied the correct test in holding that the arbitral award suffered from the vice of perversity and patent illegality. The findings of the Division Bench were borne out from the record and were not based on a mis-appreciation of law or fact.