(1.) Two important questions arise in these appeals - first, as to whether an "award" delivered by an Emergency Arbitrator under the Arbitration Rules of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre ["SIAC Rules"] can be said to be an order under Section 17(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 ["Arbitration Act"]; and second, as to whether an order passed under Section 17(2) of the Arbitration Act in enforcement of the award of an Emergency Arbitrator by a learned Single Judge of the High Court is appealable.
(2.) The brief facts necessary to appreciate the context in which these two questions arise are as follows:
(3.) Mr. Gopal Subramanium, learned Senior Advocate appearing on behalf of Amazon, took us through the record with painstaking detail. He castigated the impugned orders of the Division Bench as suffering from a complete non-application of mind in that the order dated 8th February, 2021 referred to three agreements, the third being between FRL and Reliance Retail Ltd., which is an error apparent on the face of the record. Secondly, it went on to observe that in the aforesaid agreement, Amazon is not a party. It then went on to hold that an appeal against an order under Section 17(2) of the Arbitration Act would be maintainable under the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure on the basis of the reasoning contained in a Delhi High Court judgment in South Delhi Municipal Corporation vs. Tech Mahindra, (2019) SCC Online Delhi 11863, relying upon paragraphs 8 to 11 thereof. Mr. Subramanium argued that had the learned Division Bench bothered to refer to paragraphs 12 and 13 of the aforesaid judgment, it would be clear that this authority would be an authority for exactly the opposite proposition, thereby rendering an appeal under Order XLIII, Rule1(r) of the Code of Civil Procedure non-maintainable when it is read with Section 37 of the Arbitration Act. Further observations that prima facie, the agreements are between different parties, and therefore, the group-of-companies doctrine cannot be invoked, without any reasoning, again betrays a complete non-application of mind. Since the second impugned order of the Division Bench relies upon this very order to stay even the detailed judgment of the Single Judge, the learned senior counsel argued that the second order, being a reiteration of the first, suffers from the same malady.
ABOUT US "REGENT COMPUTRONICS PVT. LTD." is a Company incorporated in 1991 under the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956. Since its inception to 1995, the Company was busy in carrying out the activities related to various Banks' Job Work..
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