Taking a note of the ongoing tussle between Delhi Metro and Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA), has proposed to amend Section 89 of the Metro Railways (Operations and Maintenance) Act, 2002, to eliminate any possibility of attachment of metro railway assets (including financial assets) pursuant to any execution processes carried out by courts. These amendments will remove any clauses in the present Act that allow takeover of metro properties by unfavourable court verdicts.

According to the proposed amendment, no rolling stock, tracks, machinery, plant, tools, fittings, materials or effects used or provided by a metro railway administration for the purpose of traffic on its railway, stations, workshops, offices, earnings or any parcel of land held by Metro Rail Administration shall be liable to be taken in execution of any decree or order of any court or of any local authority or person having by law the power to attach property or otherwise to cause the property to be taken in execution.

“Sanction of attachment of properties of Delhi Metro was denied by the Central Government as that would entail closure of Delhi Metro and bringing the entire city to a halt. A situation of this kind would not only cause inconvenience to lakhs of common people of Delhi-NCR but also a lead to an alarming situation where law and order in the city could be at stake. The Central Government being a custodian of the public good cannot allow such a lethal situation to arise. In view of the above background, the Ministry is of the opinion to amend the Section 89 to make it absolute so that no attachment of properties or bank accounts or any asset of any metro railways properties can ever be carried out,” as per the amendment in the Section 89 of the Metro Railways (Operation and Maintenance) Act, 2002 (60 of 2002) proposed by the Ministry.

Delhi Metro and DAMEPL are engaged in a long-drawn battle over an arbitral award which attained finality in 2021 when Supreme Court ruled in favour of the latter. It was in September, 2021 that the DAMEPL approached the Delhi High Court for enforcement of the 2017 award. The DMRC was required to pay Rs 7,045.41 crore up to September 10, 2021, as per DAMEPL. Around Rs 1,000 crore was deposited by DMRC in an ESCROW account in September 2021.

At present, 845 km of metro lines are operational in 20 different cities and about 991 km of metro rail projects (including Delhi Meerut RRTS) are under construction in various cities of the country. The operation and maintenance of metro rail in the country is governed by the Metro Railways (Operation & Maintenance) Act, 2002 (60 of 2002). Section 89 of the Metro Rail (Operation & Maintenance) Act, 2002 deals with restriction on execution against metro railway property.

Sources said that the Ministry admits that such a step is expedient in view of the order of Delhi High Court in the case of DAMEPL vs Delhi Metro, whereby the Delhi High Court had sought the view of the Centre whether it was willing to sanction attachment of Delhi Metro assets as required by Section 89(1) of the said Act, towards satisfaction of the arbitral award in favour of the DAMEPL. The Ministry had conveyed to the Court in the said case that it was not inclined to grant such sanction.

It bears consideration that the existing provisions in Section 89 provide sufficient safeguard against any forced suspension of operations as all operational assets of metro railways are in any case beyond the scope of attachment without prior consent of the ministry.

“The existing Section 89(2) conveys that the earnings of the metro railway could be attached by a court in execution.

It is now proposed that Section 89(2) be deleted altogether, thereby implying that any metro railway organisation would be beyond the purview of courts as regards execution proceedings, unless such organisations voluntarily give consent to suffer such execution proceedings, which is naturally unlikely,” sources said.