The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and upheld the Reliance Infrastructure’s arbitral award, directing DMRC to pay damages of Rs 2,800 crore plus interest to the Reliance Infrastructure arm.
The Court has directed DMRC to pay damages to the tune of Rs 2,800 crore plus interest. As per DMRC, the total amount of interest payable in terms of the Award towards termination payment cumulatively amounts to Rs 4506.02 crore.
The matter is related to a 2008 agreement between the two entities for the construction and operation of Delhi Airport Express Metro, India’s first private city rail project, on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. However, Reliance Infrastructure terminated the agreement in 2012, alleging that Delhi Metro had violated the terms of the contract and sought termination fee from DMRC.
Later, DMRC initiated arbitration in this matter and in 2017, the Arbitral Tribunal directed DMRC to pay Rs 2800 crore along with interest to Reliance Infra as damages.
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This decision of the tribunal was also upheld by a Single-Judge bench of the Delhi High Court in 2018. DMRC challenged the decision of the single bench in double bench of the High Court, which ruled in DMRC’s favour in 2019.
Reliance Infra had challenged this decision of the double Bench of Delhi High Court in the Supreme Court. The apex court has now overturned the previous order and asked DMRC to honour the arbitral award.
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