Supreme Court lifts ₹4,700-cr burden off DMRC, criticises its own 2021 verdict

Supreme Court criticizes own judgment, overturns ₹4,700 crore award against DMRC in favor of DAMEPL.

In a rare move, the Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, criticised its own judgment of 2021 upholding a ₹4,700 crore arbitral award against Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in favour of Delhi Airport Metro Express (DAMEPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said the judgment was perverse and patiently illegal.

The Supreme Court said the 2021 judgment of the apex court committed a grave miscarriage of justice by interfering with a Division Bench decision of the Delhi High Court.

The Division Bench had applied the correct test in holding that the Arbitral Tribunal’s award in 2017 in favour of the DAMEPL “suffered from the vice of perversity and patent illegality”.

Allowing the curative petition filed by the DMRC, Chief Justice Chandrachud said it was perverse on the part of the two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in 2021 to “saddle a public utility with an exorbitant amount of liability”.

The court said the 2021 verdict upholding the Arbitral Tribunal’s award was a complete “misappreciation of law and facts’‘ which led to a grave miscarriage of justice. The extraordinary circumstances of the case have compelled the Supreme Court to invoke Article 142 of the Constitution to set matters right, Chief Justice Chandrachud said.

The court ordered any proceedings to enforce the Arbitral award to cease. Any amounts deposited by DMRC should be refunded.