DAMEPL files contempt of court petition against Delhi Metro Rail Corporation

New Delhi, India (Urban Transport News): The Reliance Infrastructure subsidiary - Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL) has filed contempt of court petition against Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC) in Delhi High Court for delay the execution of the over Rs 4,600-crore arbitral award. The company in its petition said that DMRC is deliberately trying to delay the execution of award against it.

In the petition, it has claimed that the delay is costing taxpayers a daily interest of almost Rs 1.7 crore.

It has been further claimed that DMRC, in an affidavit filed in December, had disclosed “total available funds” of Rs 5,800.93 crore, but had not given the full bank account details and trying to mislead the High Court.

In May 2017 award, an arbitral tribunal had passed an order in favour of DAMEPL, which had pulled out from running the Delhi Metro's Airport Express line over safety issues, and accepted its claim that the running of operations on the corridor was not viable due to structural defects in the viaduct.

In its latest plea DAMEPL submitted that DMRC ought to comply with the Delhi High Court's order in letter and spirit and furnish complete details of all of its bank accounts and the total amount lying to the credit of such accounts along with the respective bank statements.

The entire 22.7 km long Delhi Metro Airport Line (Orange Line) was constructed in the closed supervision of DMRC's present Managing Director Mangu Singh who was the Director-in-charge (Project Director) at the time of execution and implementation of the corridor. 

Metro services were suspended on July 8, 2012 due to a series of technical problems, including cracks in the girders, the iron beams that support the tracks; dislocated bearings that support the train; defective tracks and water seepage in tunnels. The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (then Ministry of Urban Development) subsequently disclosed that several clips in the underground section have been seriously damaged and it will take at least 5 months to rectify the problem. A joint inspection by DMRC and Reliance Infrastructure team has revealed that 540 bearings need rectification and some girders which have cracked also need to be recast.

On June  27, 2013,  DAMEPL had informed to DMRC that they are unable to operate the line beyond June 30, 2013. DMRC took over operations of Airport Express line from July 1, 2013 with an operations and maintenance team of 100 officials to handle the line.