Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 – s.34 – Limitation Act, 1963 – s.12 – Limitation period for filing an application to set aside an arbitral award – Applicability of s.12 of the 1963 Act to s. 34 proceedings – On facts, arbitral award in favour of the appellant signed and delivered to respondent on 09.04.2022 – Respondent filed application to set aside the award on 11.07.2022 – Trial court held the application to be within limitation as the 3-month period expired on 09.07.2022, which was a second Saturday and the following day was a Sunday, and since the court was closed on these days, the respondent filed application on the next working day-11.07.2022 – Recall application by appellant – Trial court allowed the same holding that s.34 application was barred by limitation as the 3-month period expired on 08.07.2022 on which day the court was working – Appeal u/s.37 by respondent, allowed by the High Court – Correctness:
Held: Statutory language of s.34(3) clearly stipulates the limitation period as “three months”, as opposed to the condonable period as “thirty days” – Difference in language unambiguously demonstrates the legislative intent that the limitation period is 3 calendar months as opposed to 90 days – Thus, it cannot be said that 3 months must be read as 90 days in the context of s.34(3) – Nothing in the statutory language or scheme of s.34(3) that is contraindicative that s.12(1) does not apply – On facts, since s.12(1) applies, date of receiving signed copy of award must be excluded and 3-month limitation period must be reckoned from 10.04.2022 which expires on 09.07.2022, which was a second Saturday when the court was not working – Benefit of s.4 of the Limitation Act will inure to the benefit of the respondent – Thus, the respondent’s application filed on 11.07.2022-next working day of the court, must be considered as being filed within the limitation period – No delay in filing the application and sufficient cause need not be shown for condonation of delay – High Court rightly allowed the appeal u/s.37 and held that the respondent’s application u/s.34 was filed within the limitation period. [Paras 8, 12-15]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Nidhi Jain. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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