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The Supreme Court ruled in favour of e-commerce giant Amazon.com after it had filed a plea against a Rs 24,713 crore deal for the merger of Future Retail Limited (FRL) with Reliance Retail.

The top court bench stated that the emergency award is enforceable under Indian laws and upheld the Delhi High Court judgement passed earlier. “The emergency award order is an order within Section 17 (1) and can be enforced under Section 17(2) of the Arbitration Act,” the Supreme Court said.

Read | E-Tail struggle: The Amazon-Future Retail court battle intensifies

The top court had on Thursday reserved its verdict on the pleas of e-commerce giant Amazon against the deal between FRL and Reliance Retail.

Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC and FRL have been engaged in a bitter legal fight over the deal and the US-base firm had filed a plea in the Supreme Court, stating that the Singapore Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award — which restrained FRL from going ahead with the merger — was valid and enforceable.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing on behalf of Future Retail in the previous hearing, referred to judgements on validity and the enforceability of arbitral awards and said there was no notion of EA under the Indian law on arbitration and there was no arbitration agreement to this effect.

Salve added that there was no provision for EA under the Indian law and “it cannot be done by the process of construction”. Salve made the comment while referring to the single-judge order of the Delhi High Court which had held the award of the EA to be valid.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s legal representative advocate Gopal Subramanium had told the bench that the Biyanis of the Future Group had negotiated with it to enter into certain agreements and are bound by the EA award restraining FRL from going ahead with its merger deal with Reliance Retail.

Amazon had earlier moved the top court against the Delhi HC’s division bench order which cleared the way for the Reliance-FRL deal. The division bench stayed the single-judge direction to FRL and various authorities to maintain the status quo on the deal on February 8.

The interim direction was passed on FRL’s appeal challenging the February 2 order of the single judge which had ruled in favour of the US firm saying that the EA’s award was valid and enforceable.

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India today

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