2014 (11) TMI 1114 - SUPREME COURT

Arbitration award - Held that:- Division Bench has interfered wrongly with the arbitral award on several counts. It had no business to enter into a pure question of fact to set aside the Arbitrator for having applied a formula of 20 months instead of 25 months. Though this would inure in favour of the appellant, it is clear that the appellant did not file any cross objection on this score. Also, it is extremely curious that the Division Bench found that an adjustment would have to be made with claims awarded under claims 2, 3 and 4 which are entirely separate and independent claims and have nothing to do with claims 12 and 13. The formula then applied by the Division Bench was that it would itself do “rough and ready justice”. We are at a complete loss to understand how this can be done by any court under the jurisdiction exercised under Section 34 of the Arbitration Act. As has been held above, the expression “justice” when it comes to setting aside an award under the public policy ground can only mean that an award shocks the conscience of the court. It cannot possibly include what the court thinks is unjust on the facts of a case for which it then seeks to substitute its view for the Arbitrator’s view and does what it considers to be “justice”. With great respect to the Division Bench, the whole approach to setting aside arbitral awards is incorrect. The Division Bench has lost sight of the fact that it is not a first appellate court and cannot interfere with errors of fact.

An argument was made before the learned Single Judge that there has been a duplication of claims awarded The Single Judge is clearly right. We have gone through all the 15 claims supplied to us and we find that none of these claims are in fact overlapping. They are all contained under separate heads. This argument, therefore, must also fail.

The appeal is, therefore, allowed and the judgment of the Division Bench is set aside. The judgment of the Single Judge is upheld and consequently, the Arbitral award dated 23rd May, 2005 is as a whole upheld