These observations was made in a judgment passed on February 1 by a bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy.
The Court was adjudicating a batch of appeals filed by CMRL and Transtonnelstroy-Afcons, a joint venture that had entered into an agreement with CMRL for carrying out construction work for certain Chennai metro rail stations.
Disputes arose after Transtonnelstroy allegedly failed to deliver by the due date as originally agreed upon by the parties. The parties opted for arbitral proceedings to settle the dispute. The arbitral tribunal ruled in favour of Transtonnelstroy.
CMRL then challenged the tribunal order before the High Court, claiming that the arbitrators had deviated from the agreed procedure and conducted their own analyses to conclude that Transtonnelstroy was entitled to seek an extension of time for completing the project.
CMRL further argued that the Tribunal had, thereby, failed to grant it an opportunity to present its case on certain aspects before arriving at such a conclusion.
A single-judge order passed in the matter was challenged by both CMRL and Transtonnelstroy before the High Court division bench.
Transtonnelstroy sought quashing of the single judge’s order and prayed that the original arbitral award be confirmed.
On the other hand, CMRL challenged only a portion of the single-judge order, where the judge had directed the parties to go back to the Tribunal to prove some of their claims.
Notably, the appeals involved allegations that the arbitral tribunal had relied on unmarked documents, behind the back of the parties and without giving them an opportunity to comment on the same.
The division bench, while considering these appeals, noted that the Tribunal had called for such unmarked records after reserving the matter for orders.
It further observed that the Tribunal had failed to inform either of the parties about the purpose of collecting such records and had merely emailed both the parties calling for the records.
Source: Barandbench
