5-judge bench to hear DMRC curative plea against arbitral award favouring DAMPEL: SC

New Delhi, Feb 5 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Monday said a five-judge bench will on February 15 hear the curative plea of DMRC challenging a 2017 arbitral award asking it to pay around Rs 8,000 crore to Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), a Reliance Infrastructure firm.

A special bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant said that the two judges of the earlier bench, which had passed the impugned order, have demitted office and hence, it would be desirable that a larger bench of five judges hears the curative plea.

“We can take it up in a combination of five. The two judges who passed the (2021) order have since retired,” the CJI said.

The curative plea of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), represented by Attorney General R Venkataramani, was opposed by senior advocates Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Reliance Infra firm.

The bench appointed advocates Tarun Johri and Mahesh Agarwal as nodal counsel and said a common compilation of the judicial records be filed for smooth hearing.

The DMRC filed a curative plea in August 2022 against the dismissal of its review plea by the top court in 2021.

Opposing the plea, Salve said that he was “flabbergasted” as no ground for entertaining a curative petition was made out.

After the dismissal of the plea of DMRC, the Reliance firm had moved the Delhi High Court seeking execution of the arbitral award.

The Delhi High Court, on March 29 last year, had said its earlier direction on attachment of DMRC funds in case of non-compliance of its directions in the execution plea will not come in the way of payment of salaries to employees as well as payment towards operation and maintenance expenses.

On March 17, the high court had directed the Centre and the city government to attend to the DMRC's request for extending the sovereign guarantees or subordinate debt to enable it to make the payment of the dues of an arbitral award passed in favour of the DAMEPL.

It had also said the sovereign governments cannot shirk their liability to abide by binding judgments and decrees.

The high court had also ordered that in case of a failure on the part of the parties to proceed in terms of the directions, the entire amount under "Total DMRC Funds, Total Project Funds and Total Other Funds" shall be attached.

The order was modified by the high court on the review plea of the DMRC.

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. PTI SJK SJK KVK KVK