The Pioneer | Revisit Delhi Metro Act to ensure none of its assets attached: Min to officials

Mar 07,2023

The Housing and Urban Affairs (HUA) Ministry has directed its officials to revisit a Metro Railways Act provision to ensure no properties or bank accounts of the metro are attached ever.

The noting was made by HUA Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in the document attached in an additional affidavit filed by the Ministry in the Delhi High Court on March 3. The Minister has refused to give permission to attach the properties of Delhi Metro, saying it has become the lifeline of Delhi and the National Capital Region with the livelihood

of lakhs of people depending on it.

This comes days after the Delhi High Court asked the Centre to decide on the issue of granting sanction for attaching movable and immovable assets of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for paying the unpaid amount of arbitral award to Reliance Infrastructure-promoted Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL).

The Minister said the Delhi Metro meets the commuting needs of almost 60 lakh people of Delhi-NCR on a daily basis. “The Central Government is being asked to give sanction to attach the properties of DMRC to pay a company which abandoned/deserted the services of the airport metro line in the first few years of a 30-year contract,” the Minister said.

He said that any adverse outcome leading to a situation where the public utility grinds to a standstill could lead to a serious law-and-order problem across the length of the metro network of nearly 400 kilometres. “I also direct the division to revisit section 89 of the Metro Act, 2002, and amend the same to make it absolute, so that no attachment of its properties or bank accounts or any assets or operations can ever be carried out,” Puri said.

In his separate noting in the document attached to the affidavit, HUA Secretary Manoj Joshi said, “Given the background of the case and in view of public interest, we should not agree for sanction attachment of assets of DMRC.”

On February 27, the court had asked the Centre to decide on whether it proposes to grant sanction for the attachment of movable and immovable assets of DMRC for paying the arbitral award.

Earlier, the court had noted the total amount of the award with interest till February 14, 2022, was Rs 8,009.38 crore. Out of this, a sum of Rs 1,678.42 crore has been paid so far by the DMRC and Rs 6,330.96 crore is still due.

On February 17, the high court issued notices to the HUA Ministry and the Delhi government, the two stakeholders in the DMRC, to apprise it of how the unpaid arbitral award will be paid. The two governments were impleaded as parties in the execution proceedings.