Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited is expecting to extract 30 million standard cubic meters of natural gas every day from the KG-D6 gas block, where it is spending $5 billion on three projects. But it also has an arbitration pending in court from 2011, when it challenged the disallowance of $2.3 billion in cost by the government for the site, for not achieving targeted output. Now the Supreme Court has refused to interfere with a Delhi High Court order against the central government's plea to discharge two judges on the arbitration panel.
Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha said, refused to step in after the government had moved SC in December 2022. The Union government cites alleged bias on part of the two judges, to demand their removal from the panel. The High Court had also held that the government's plea wasn't maintainable.
In 2014, a former judge from UK, Sir Bernard Rix was named as arbitrator in the three-member tribunal in place of, SP Bharucha, a former chief justice of India. Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge, was also appointed by the Supreme Court as the neutral arbitrator back then.
The central government had approached the court against the appointment of the two.
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