The Chief Engineer, Water Resources Department & Ors. vs Rattan India Power Limited through its Director & Ors.
Background
Rattan India Power (formerly Sophia Power Company) wanted to divert a large quantity of dam water, otherwise reserved for irrigating farmland in a water-scarce part of Maharashtra, to run a 2640 MW thermal power plant. When the State gave in-principle approval in 2008, the standard "irrigation restoration charge" was Rs. 50,000 per hectare of irrigation lost, but the final sanction, the demand letters and every later communication fixed it at Rs. 1,00,000 per hectare (a total of Rs. 232.18 crore), and the Government formally raised the rate to Rs. 1,00,000 from April 2009. After repeatedly asking for a reduction and being refused, the company signed a water supply agreement on 22 May 2012 accepting Rs. 1,00,000 per hectare and gave an undertaking to pay in five instalments. It then filed a writ petition, which the Bombay High Court dismissed in November 2012 while asking the State to decide the company's representation; the State rejected it. A second writ petition succeeded in 2016, with the High Court halving the charge to Rs. 50,000 per hectare on the ground that the rate on the date of in-principle approval should apply. The State appealed.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court allowed the State's appeal and restored the full charge. It held that a party which has signed a contract fixing the consideration, and backed it with a written undertaking, is estopped from turning around and questioning that amount; the rights and liabilities crystallised on the date of the agreement (22 May 2012), so the rate prevailing then, not at the in-principle approval stage, governs. The Court rejected the discrimination argument after examining the State's explanations for each of the eight other companies (approvals cancelled, a Central undertaking exempted for public benefit, an agreement signed when the older rate still applied, no irrigation loss in some areas), noting that Rattan India draws a large volume from a water-scarce region. It also faulted the High Court for entertaining a second writ petition seeking essentially the same relief already refused in 2012, and for substituting its own view for the terms of a contract the company had knowingly and deliberately signed. Since only two of five instalments had been paid, the Court directed payment of the balance by 30 June 2023 with 12% per annum interest from each due date up to the date of the High Court's 2016 order.
Lesson Learnt
Once you sign a contract accepting a price, you cannot later use a writ petition to have a court rewrite that price: a contract is binding, and the terms are fixed as on the date of signing. Courts will also not allow a party to keep relitigating the same grievance through successive petitions.