BAGADIYA BROTHERS PRIVATE LIMITED Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is the second round of litigation involving the Petitioner on the one hand and the Opposite Party Nos.1 to 3 - South Eastern Railway (SER/Railways) on the other concerning the disputes arising out of the Wagon Investment Scheme (WIS) introduced in the Railway budget of 2005-06.

(2.) In the first round of litigation, the Petitioner had filed W.P. (C) No.2254 of 2017 which was disposed by a Division Bench (DB) of this Court on 18th January, 2018. In terms of the said judgment, representations dated 30th January, 2018 and 13th April, 2018 were made by the Petitioner to the Railways which were rejected by the impugned order dated 24th April, 2018 passed by the Chief Operations Manager (COM), SER (Opposite Party No.2). Accordingly, the present writ petition has been filed.

(3.) The background facts are that in the Railway budget 2005-06, a new scheme called 'WIS' was introduced. The objective of the WIS was to encourage Public Private Partnership (PPP) for procurement of wagons to meet the anticipated incremental freight traffic of the later years. WIS envisaged that the customers investing in Railway Wagons will be assured of the supply of a guaranteed number of rakes (each rake containing 59 wagons) every month based on the number of rakes procured and the turn round of the type of wagons with 10% concession in freight. In addition, two bonus rakes per month would be supplied, without freight concession for the types of wagons indicated under para 7.9 of the WIS. The guaranteed rakes were in addition to the normal supply of rakes to the investors during the previous financial years.