SC dismisses Anil Ambani Group's appeal on Delhi airport modernisation

The Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed an appeal filed by Reliance Airport Developers challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict on airport modernisation. A bench comprising Supreme Court justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia ruled, "The appeal is sans merit and deserves to be dismissed."

The plaintiff, an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company, had challenged the 21 April verdict of the High Court, which had held that the government's action was in no way discriminatory, illogical or illegal.

Reliance Airport Developers had contended that as the highest financial bidder for the Delhi Airport and the highest technical bidder for the Mumbai Airport, it should have been awarded at least one of the projects. It had also contended that the government and the AAI deliberately amended the tender norms to favour the GMR and GVK-led consortia.

The High Court had upheld the technical parameters adopted in awarding the contracts, and also said that the government and the AAI had "absolute discretion to vary the tender requirements or amend the term of RFP (request for proposal)" according to project requirements.

The Supreme Court agreed with the company's contention that the lowering of the benchmark from 80 to 50 per cent was totally arbitrary. It was severely critical of the government-appointed evaluation committee for altering the scoring norms, saying it had no business to expand or narrow down the scoring pattern.