The Delhi High Court on Tuesday refused to grant interim relief to Indo-Russian oil refining company Nayara Energy, which wants SAP India to restore its software services.
Justice Amit Bansal said that he will consider granting an interim relief sought by Nayara only after hearing the SAP’s stand. “It is not a straightforward issue. I will need to have them put their reply,” the court said, while issuing notice on the interim relief application filed by Nayara. The case will be further heard on October 29.
Nayara claimed that SAP’s services were critical for it to issue invoices and the suspension of the software services by the latter was unnecessary.
Senior counsel Rajiv Nayar and Dayan Krishnan, on behalf of Nayara Energy, told the court that oil refining firm’s agreement was with SAP India, and thus it can not be subject to EU sanctions.
Krishnan submitted that with the implementation of the GST 2.0 regime from Monday, Nayara was unable to issue any invoices because changes need to be made to the software which can only be done with the SAP’s help. “I cannot invoice because my entire accounting is through SAP. I can’t make a manual change… With the change in the GST regime, I have to download the Indian specific module, which has been blocked,” he contended.
Further, Nayar also claimed that Nayara was generating 8.5 per cent of the petroleum revenue for India, and its work was critical to the energy security of the country.
However, SAP India informed the court that its parent company was based in Germany and the Indian firm cannot provide its services on its own and need support from its parent.
Senior counsel Amit Sibal, appearing for the tech giant, said that its officials would end up in a German jail for violating the EU sanctions if it were to restore the services to Nayara.
He further said that the company was yet to release any GST 2.0-related software patch to any other company. “I don’t have it. The services have been suspended from Germany because the contractual framework is such that the supply and support is not done purely from India by me,” Sibal said.
Earlier in July, Nayara had withdrawn a similar case filed against Microsoft from HC after the US tech giant had restored critical services to Russia’s Rosneft-backed refinery and fuel marketing company.
Microsoft had then suspended its services, including Outlook email accounts and Microsoft Teams, to Nayara after the European Union sanctioned the latter. This prompted Nayara, formerly known as Essar Oil, to move the HC.
Nayara operates a major refinery in Gujarat and controls over 6,000 retail fuel outlets across India. It had accused Microsoft of “restricting Nayara Energy’s access to its own data, proprietary tools, and products, despite these being acquired under fully paid-up licences.”
On July 18, the European Union had imposed a new set of sanctions targeting Russian interests, including Nayara Energy, a major buyer of Russian oil, for the first time. The sanctions were part of its continuing efforts to exert economic pressure on Russia over its war in Ukraine.
