New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed a PIL filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, seeking to quash the Air India disinvestment process.
A division bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh dismissed the petition.
In October last year, the government signed a share purchase agreement of Rs 18,000 crore with Tata Group after the company won the bid for Air India.
Swamy, in the PIL, had alleged that the bidding process was arbitrary, corrupt, against public interest, and rigged in favour of the Tata group.
The BJP MP's plea added that there was practically only one bidder in the process as the second bidder was a consortium led by SpiceJet owner, against whom insolvency proceedings were going on in Madras High Court.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Central government, claimed that the disinvestment was a policy decision that was taken keeping in view huge losses to Air India. He further claimed that the decision was taken in 2017 that whenever the disinvestment takes place, up to that date the government will bear the losses and after that date, the bidder will bear the losses.
He also pointed out that SpiceJet was never a part of the consortium and thus, the proceedings against it are irrelevant to the disinvestment process.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve appearing for Tata group had urged the Court not to keep the process pending as it involves huge transactions.
Read: Air India handover to Tata Group delayed by a month till Jan
