In a major relief to the Future Group, the Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside previous orders of the Delhi High Court passed in Future-Amazon dispute and remanded the matters back to the High Court asking it to decide all issues on merits afresh.

"We set aside the impugned orders dated February 2, 2021 and March 18, 2021 and other impugned order dated October 29, 2021. We direct the learned (HC) judge to consider issue and pass an order on its own merits uninfluenced by observations," the bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kohli said in its order.

The CJI said he would request the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court to set up a bench for speedy disposal of the case.

The apex court, on January 11, had reserved its order on two sets of petitions filed by FCPL (Future Coupons Private Ltd ) and FRL (Future Retail Ltd).

US e-commerce major Amazon has been opposing the Future group decision to go ahead with the Rs 24,731 crore merger deal of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail. The US firm got the Emergency Award (EA) of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) in its favour which restrained Future group from going ahead with the merger deal.

The EA award has been upheld in the final arbitral award of October, 2021. The High Court refused to stay the final arbitral award and by another order, it had imposed costs of Rs 20 lakh on the Future Group and others associated with it and ordered attachment of their properties.

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(Edited by : Aditi Gautam)

First Published:Feb 1, 2022 11:41 AM IST