Kashish Jain
Recently the Bombay High Court dismissed a plea filed by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation. This is the plea that challenged an interim award against it by an Arbitration Tribunal over the construction and widening of Shilphata road near Kalyan. This construction would connect the National Highway 3 and 4.
A single-judge bench of Justice Burgess Colabawalla also quashed the award of the tribunal to the extent it permitted MSRDC and a consortium of private firms to lead additional evidence for finalizing the exact award.
The consortium that demanded over Rs 160 crore as charges incurred due to delay in the construction of the road states that it had been awarded the contract in 2006.
The work mentioned under the contract was to construct the road and the deadline to achieve this was till 2008. An extension till December 2009 was granted as it couldn’t complete the work by the original deadline.
The consortium further pointed out that as per its agreement with MSRDC, it was to collect toll from the road till 2013. Due to a multitude of reasons, however, it could not achieve this goal as well.
It was claimed that Thane Police had banned heavy vehicles from using the road in question, thereby, making an impact on the toll collection and that Government buses and the ones run by the Kalyan-Dombivli civic body and Navi Mumbai corporation blatantly refused to pay the toll taxes despite them being granted no exemption by the MSRDC.
This resulted in the Consortium terminating its concession agreement (which it had signed in 2006 with the MSRDC).
On the other hand, the MSRDC argued that the consortium wrongly terminated the agreement as it was against the provisions of the concession agreement. The MSRDC even trashed the claims of the consortium.
The Tribunal has passed an interim order against the MSRDC. It has stated that it would pass a final order at a later date and has accordingly granted time to both the parties, the MSRDC, and the Consortium to file their written submissions and come up with additional evidence (if they desire so).
This part of the Tribunal’s order was however quashed by Justice Colbawalla who upheld the interim award and has stated that the tribunal has acted in a manner that can be deemed illegal.
This was stated about the granting of additional time to parties to come up with evidence.
