An international arbitration tribunal has directed the Indian government to pay $1.2 billion in damages to UK’s Cairn Energy — the second such embarrassing loss for the Modi government following the one to Vodafone in another arbitration matter just three months back. Both the cases were against a controversial 2012 retrospective tax legislation that gave the Indian government the power to go after M&A deals all the way back to 1962 if the underlying asset was in India.
The international arbitration tribunal ruled unanimously that India had breached its obligations to Cairn under the UK-India Bilateral Investment Treaty and awarded Cairn damages of $1.2 billion plus interest and costs, Cairn Energy said in its statement.
