Delhi HC clears way to hear Centre’s $2.31-bn recovery appeal against RIL

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : A division bench of the Delhi high court on Monday agreed to hear the Centre’s plea seeking to recover around $2.31 billion from Reliance Industries Ltd and its partners in the nearly three-decade-old Panna-Mukta and Tapti offshore oilfields dispute. The bench comprising Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Madhu Jain rejected RIL’s objection that the Centre’s appeal was not maintainable.

A detailed written order is awaited. The matter is expected to be placed before the roster bench of the Chief Justice of the Delhi high court before 17 February to decide the further course of hearing. The appeal arises from a June 2023 single-judge ruling that rejected the Centre’s attempt to recover money based on a 2016 partial arbitration decision.

The ruling held that arbitration proceedings between the parties were still ongoing and that no final amount payable by either side had been fixed. This is the second major arbitration-related dispute involving RIL and the Union government in recent times. A separate high-value case involving RIL—arises from the Krishna-Godavari basin gas migration dispute with state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

Ltd—is currently pending before the Supreme Court, after the Delhi high court set aside a $1.7-billion arbitral award in RIL’s favour in February 2025. The dispute began with production sharing contracts signed in December 1994 between the Union government and a consortium led by RIL, along with British Gas and ONGC. These contracts allowed the companies to extract oil and gas from the Panna-Mukta and Tapti offshore fields.