Delhi HC relief for DMRC over Airport Express Line

NEW DELHI: In a major boost to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Delhi high court on Tuesday set aside an arbitration award of over Rs 3,000 crore, payable to a Reliance Infrastructure subsidiary involved in Airport Express Line.

A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Chander Shekhar reversed an earlier ruling where the single judge had upheld the arbitration award and directed DMRC to pay the money to Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL).

Partly allowing the appeal by DMRC, HC said it will be open to both parties to again go in for an arbitration. A detailed copy of the order is awaited.

HC’s verdict on Tuesday came on an appeal filed by DMRC challenging the single judge order and seeking to set aside the award passed against it in May 2017.

In its plea, DMRC maintained that the original termination notice of October 2012 by which the concessionaire DAMEPL ended its agreement and exited the project, was illegal, against the provisions of the concession agreement, and void.

Soon after launching a joint public private partnership to build operate and run the Airport Express Line, the DMRC and DAMEPL partnership ran aground over some defects in the line identified by the private concessionaire, which were allegedly not cured by DMRC.

Citing the inability of the public transport provider to cure the defects, the Reliance subsidiary terminated the contract and left the project, demanding payments and all revenues from the project invoking the concession agreement.

When all attempts at resolving the dispute failed, DMRC took the case to arbitration and an award was granted by the tribunal against it, in favour of DAMEPL in 2017. The award asked Delhi Metro to pay nearly Rs 3,000 crore, along with interest.