A Court Deciding ‘Section 34’ Petition Has No Jurisdiction To Remand The Matter To Arbitrator For Fresh Decision, Reiterates SC

The Supreme Court has emphasized that the court while choosing a request of under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, has no locale to remand the issue to the authority for a new decision.

The bench including Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and Justice Navin Sinha put aside a Calcutta High Court order that remanded the issue to the arbitrator with the end goal to choose the purpose of impediment once again. The division bench of the high court had confirmed the single bench order of remand.

The Supreme Court seat put aside both the judgments and consigned the issue to the phase of the original Section 34 request of under the watchful eye of the single judge. The court said the said appeal must be heard, on its benefits as per the parameters set around the Supreme Court, incorporating that in Kinnari Mullick v. Ghanshyam Das Damani
It was observed: “This Court in a progression of judgments coming full circle in Kinnari Mullick and Another versus Ghanshyam Das Damani, 2018 held that the court while choosing a Section 34 appeal to has no purview to remand the issue to the Arbitrator for a new decision. It is, along these lines, clear that the scholarly Single Judge’s judgment is in opposition to this judgment because of which both the judgments of the Single Judge and in addition the Division Bench must be set aside.”

The judgment by a three-judge seat in Kinnari Mullick had additionally emerged from a Calcutta High Court judgment. It was held that the restricted attentiveness accessible to the court under Section 34(4) can be practiced just upon a composed application made for that benefit by involved with the mediation procedures and the court can’t practice this constrained intensity of conceding the procedures previously on suo motu cognizance.

“Additionally, before formally putting aside the honor, if the gathering to the mediation procedures neglects to ask for the Court to concede the procedures pending before it, at that point it isn’t available to the gathering to move an application under Section 34(4) of the Act. For, ensuing to transfer of the principle procedures under Section 34 of the Act by the Court, it would move toward becoming functus officio. As it were, the restricted cure accessible under Section 34(4) is required to be summoned by the gathering to the arbitral procedures previously the honor is put aside by the Court,” the bench had held.

By-
Vedant Agrawal
Student Reporter- INBA