Sagus Legal is a full-service boutique that just celebrated its fourth birthday. The commercial litigation practice handles a plethora of disputes, such as shareholder disputes, partnership disputes, antitrust bankruptcy avoidance actions, and conflicts related to securities, commercial contracts, lender liability, real estate, labour and trade and customs. It has a strong power and electricity speciality, as evidenced by its impressive power company client roster. At the time of submission, the firm was handling disputes worth a cumulative value of more than $7.5 billion. It has offices in New Delhi, Bhubaneshwar and Gurugram.
Commercial litigation specialists and partners Anand Shrivastava, Shruti Kanodia and Shivam Sinha are the main contacts for disputes-related work. Shrivastava and Kanodia are empanelled with REC and the firm is empanelled with PFC – two government organisations in the power sector.
In a notable power sector matter, the team is representing Odisha DISCOMs in an appeal filed by Indian Railways before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity. The matter is one of a kind, with Indian Railways seeking the status of a ‘deemed distribution licensee’ under the Electricity Act, claiming itself to be a nationwide power distribution utility, in view of expansive provisions under the Railways Act. Distribution licensees of various states were collectively contesting the status of deemed distribution licensee as sought by Indian Railways. If Indian Railways succeeds, it could result in a complete re-juggling of the long-term power contracts in India and will have severe cascading effect on the retail tariff paid by power consumers across the nation.
