On July 5, Jaipur commercial court judge Dinesh Kumar Gupta ruled that an Adani-led firm earned more than Rs 1,400 crore in transportation charges at the cost of a Rajasthan government-owned company.
The same day, the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government issued an order removing him from the post. Commercial court judges are appointed by state governments in concurrence with the High Court.
The Rajasthan High Court followed up the same day by transferring Gupta to Beawar district, 200 km from the state capital.
Two weeks later, the high court stayed Gupta’s order that imposed a Rs 50-lakh fine on the Adani-led firm and directed the Rajasthan government to request the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit the deal between the state and the conglomerate.
The order removing Gupta was issued by the state government’s Law and Legal Affairs Department. It said that the judge was being repatriated to the High Court so that he could be posted elsewhere.
The same day, the Jodhpur bench of the Rajasthan High Court ordered Gupta’s transfer to a district court in Beawar.
Scroll sent questions to the Rajasthan government’s Law and Legal Affairs Department and the High Court registrar asking why Gupta had been moved out of the commercial court and about the timing of his removal. The questions remain unanswered at the time of publication. This story will be updated if there is a response.
Contacted on phone, the judge declined to comment on his transfer.
Also read: Adani-led firm charged Rajasthan PSU over Rs 1,400 crore it wasn’t entitled to: Jaipur court
The dispute
Gupta’s judgement, which now stands stayed by the high court, brought rare scrutiny to one of India’s most contentious mining contracts.
In 2007, the coal ministry allocated a coal block in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand forest to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited, a state government-owned electricity generating firm.
The allocation was meant to give the firm direct access to coal for its thermal power plants.
But the firm entered into a joint venture with the Adani Group, in which the private conglomerate had the majority stake of 74%, and outsourced mining operations to it.
The contract signed by the Rajasthan firm and the Adani-led joint venture mandated that the coal mined from Chhattisgarh would be transported to Rajasthan by rail. For this, the Adani-led joint venture was to construct railway sidings, or side tracks to connect the mine to the main railway corridor.
Mining commenced in 2013 but the railway sidings were not built until several years later. The two firms agreed to engage a transport agency to move coal by road from the mine to the railway stations until the sidings were laid. The original contract between the firms, called the Coal Mining and Delivery Agreement, did not mention road transport.
The Adani-led joint venture billed the Rajasthan firm the cost incurred on transporting coal by road. This came to more than Rs 1,400 crore.
The Rajasthan firm paid the road transportation charges. But in 2018, when the Adani-led joint venture demanded that it also pay interest on account of delayed payments, the firm refused.
In 2020, the matter landed in the commercial court of Jaipur – the Adani-led joint venture filed the petition. But commercial court judge Dinesh Gupta ruled in favour of the Rajasthan firm.
The order
In his judgement, Gupta noted that according to the contract, it was the responsibility of the Adani-led joint venture “to build, construct and develop the railway siding from mine head up to the nearest connecting railway line”.
Since it had failed to do so, the judgement said, the Adani-led venture should “have suffered at least the burden of road transportation charges for its own default”.
Instead, the court noted, the company had claimed transportation costs of more than Rs 1,400 crore and further sought to gain additional “profit by avoiding interest burden for such cost”.
The order directed Adani-led joint venture, Parsa Kente Collieries Limited, to pay a fine of Rs 50 lakh. It also asked the state government to request the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit the deal between the two entities.
The High Court stayed Gupta’s order on July 18. Since then, hearings have continued in the matter. The next hearing is scheduled for the last week of January 2026.
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