The Supreme Court recently held that knocking the doors of writ jurisdiction against dismissal of an arbitration application by an arbitrator can only be made viable if the patent lack of inherent jurisdiction is made out.
In the present petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court the parties to arbitration agreements are seeking remedy under Article 227 of the Constitution even with no lack of patent inherent jurisdiction.
Case of the Petitioner
In the present case, the petitioner, State Power Corporation, had challenged the an order passed by the arbitral tribunal via Article 227 i.e. by applying the High Court’s writ jurisdiction.
Observation of the Court
The High Court, however disallowed the petitioner to exercise the writ jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution on the pretext that protocol as stated under Section 16 of the Arbitration Act was not followed and that the plea was filed after the finality of the order was given by the Arbitral Tribunal.
Thus in pursuant to the above stated dismissal of the High Court, the petitioner decided to move to the Supreme Court. However the Supreme Court not only dismissed the petition but also proceeded to impose fine of Rs 50,000/- stating that the case does not fall under the category of “ extremely exceptional category” of cases as was explicitly stated in the judgment of Deep Industries.
Moreover the Supreme Court also stated that the High Court should have dismissed the petition on the set legal proposition of “inherent lack of jurisdiction”. Thus the same was dismissed with heavy imposition of fine
Case details
Before: Supreme Court
Case title: Punjab State Corporation v. Emta Coal
Quorum: Hon’ble Justices Rohinton Nariman, Navin Sinha and Indra Banerjee.
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