दिल्ली उच्च न्यायालय ने नायरा एनर्जी के लिए SAP से सॉफ्टवेयर सेवाओं की बहाली का आदेश दिया

Delhi High Court directs SAP to restore software services to Nayara Energy

New Delhi, Sept. 21 -- The Delhi High Court granted interim relief to Indo-Russian oil major Nayara Energy on Monday, allowing its plea against the Indian arm of German software service provider SAP over the suspension of critical software services following European Union (EU) sanctions.

A bench led by Justice Vikas Mahajan allowed Nayara's application seeking the restoration of SAP India's suspended services.

During the proceedings, SAP's counsel requested the court to keep the judgement in abeyance for a few weeks. The court declined the request and asked the counsel to review the judgment first.

A copy of the judgment was not available at the time of publishing to assess the ruling's impact on the rights of Indian companies when foreign sanctions lead to the suspension of critical services.

The dispute began in July 2025, when SAP India Pvt Ltd suspended all critical software support services, including SAP ECC support (maintenance for its legacy core business suite), marketplace access, SSCR keys (developer credentials required to modify SAP source code), and expert services. SAP said this was done after the EU imposed sanctions on Rosneft, a Russian oil refinery that has a 49.13% stake in Nayara.

Nayara approached the Delhi High Court in September, saying the suspension blocked access to software critical for refinery operations and regulatory compliance. The company noted it was unable to implement GST 2.0 updates and argued that the disruption "poses a serious risk to India's sovereignty and public interest", given that its refinery accounts for 8.5% of the nation's energy production.

Nayara argued that SAP was using the EU trade curbs to not provide services to the energy firm despite its contractual obligations in India. It also cited a notification issued by the external affairs ministry stating India has not formally recognised those sanctions.

The oil refinery argued that since the contracts were governed by Indian law and payments were made in Indian currency, the German software giant's attempt to bypass its commitments had no legal standing.

Countering this, SAP argued that EU sanctions applied to all countries, and as a Germany-headquartered multinational group, it had to comply. SAP also claimed that services would not have been suspended had the entity been entirely India-based and free of any links to Russian ownership.

Mint's queries emailed to Nayara Energy and SAP India remained unanswered at the time of publishing.

This is not the first time a software firm has halted services to Nayara Energy. In July 2025, US tech giant Microsoft also suspended its services, citing EU sanctions.

Nayara approached the Delhi High Court seeking an order to compel Microsoft to resume services and honour its contract. Microsoft restored its cloud-based services to the refinery later that month, leading Nayara to withdraw the petition.

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, major IT companies have frequently suspended services to Russian entities, crippling businesses that rely on Western enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms. A similar precedent exists for Iran, where international software vendors withdrew support following sanctions by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), forcing local companies to scramble for technical workarounds.

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