SAP India moved the Delhi High Court to challenge a 21 September order directing it to restore software services to Nayara Energy. The court previously said, "For critical infrastructure of this scale, an uninterrupted flow of technical support services is absolutely essential." The matter awaits a new hearing date soon.
Mumbai: SAP India has moved the Delhi High Court to challenge a single-judge order directing it to restore software support services to Nayara Energy.
The German tech giant appealed the 21 September ruling by Justice Vikas Mahajan, which had granted Nayara's application for the immediate restoration of suspended services under their agreement.
The matter was listed for hearing on Friday before a bench led by Justice Prathiba M. Singh, but was not taken up as the judge was on leave.
In its 21 September order, the court held that SAP could not invoke European Union (EU) sanctions to skirt its contractual duties in India at an interim stage. It said that withholding support could expose Nayara's IT infrastructure to critical bugs, security breaches and system failures, and highlighted Nayara's role in supplying roughly 8% of India's energy needs. "For critical infrastructure of this scale, an uninterrupted flow of technical support services is absolutely essential," read a copy of the order, which Mint has reviewed.
Nayara approached the Delhi High Court in September 2025, 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.
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.
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.