 "Delhi high court")
The Delhi High Court on Friday reserved its order on an execution petition filed by Reliance Infra arm-Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL) against Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) over the payment of 2017 arbitral award dues.
Justice Yashwant Varma said parties in the case (DMRC, DAMEPL, the Centre and the Delhi government) may file their written submissions by Monday.
DMRC and DAMEPL have been at odds ever since the latter pulled out of the Delhi Metro Airport Line operations due to safety issues arising from structural defects. An arbitral court ruled in favour of the RInfra firm in 2017, asking DMRC to pay the arbitral award. The order was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
The Delhi government’s counsel, in Friday’s hearing, said that a shareholder cannot be held liable for a company’s liabilities except in case of fraud etc. “In this case, there is no element of fraud for which the Government of Delhi can be held liable in the execution proceedings,” he submitted.
On the other hand, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, appearing for the Centre, said that there may be certain cases like force majeure (unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract) when a decree may become un-executable either in law or on facts of the case.
Replying to this submission, Justice Varma asked the counsel whether he should record this submission, to which the ASG said that it may not be recorded.
After the Centre’s arguments, the DMRC counsel reiterated his earlier submissions that in this case, the shareholders (namely the Union and Delhi government) are not ordinary shareholders as both have a say in the decisions of DMRC. Both the shareholders approve, direct and finance the projects of DMRC, the DMRC counsel added.
In the last hearing, the DAMEPL counsel pointed out that about Rs 628 crore held by DMRC should be kept aside, of which Rs 514 crore is for payment of salaries, etc, and Rs 114 crore is the security deposit on smart cards.
"There is (a sum of) Rs 1,400-odd crore in their account. Out of this, Rs 302 crore is project funds and other projects is Rs 699.61 crore. A total of 1,452.44 crore must be paid to Reliance Infra. They are duty bound to pay," the DAMEPL counsel had said.
Reliance Infra had moved the Supreme Court (SC) on December 2, 2022, against DMRC, seeking payment of Rs 4,500 crore of dues from the total arbitral award(Rs 7,200 crore) to Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL). On December 14, the SC gave DMRC three months to pay dues and sent the matter back to Delhi High Court for disposal.
