Affirming the High Court's decision, the judgment authored by Justice Narasimha rejected the Appellant's argument of interpreting three months under Section 34(3) of the Arbitration Act as 90 days, instead, it said that the period should be construed as 3 calendar months.
“At this stage, it is necessary to reiterate that the statutory language of Section 34(3) clearly stipulates the limitation period as “three months”, as opposed to the condonable period as “thirty days”. This difference in language unambiguously demonstrates the legislative intent that the limitation period is 3 calendar months as opposed to 90 days. Therefore, we reject the argument taken by the appellant in its written submissions that 3 months must be read as 90 days in the context of Section 34(3).”, the court said.
“In the present case, the respondent received a signed copy of the award on 09.04.2022. Since Section 12(1) applies, this date must be excluded and the 3-month limitation period must be reckoned from 10.04.2022. This expires on 09.07.2022, which happened to be a second Saturday when the court was not working. Hence, the benefit of Section 4 of the Limitation Act will inure to the benefit of the respondent.”, the Court observed.
“Therefore, the respondent's application under Section 34, which was filed on 11.07.2022, i.e., the next working day of the court, must be considered as being filed within the limitation period. Consequently, there was no delay in filing the application and sufficient cause need not be shown for condonation of delay. The High Court therefore rightly allowed the Section 37 appeal and held that the respondent's Section 34 application was filed within the limitation period.”, the court added.
In this context, the Court referred to State of West Bengal v. Rajpath Contractors and Engineers Ltd. where it upheld the application of Section 4 of the Limitation Act, allowing a party to file an application to set aside an arbitral award on the next working day if the initial three-month period expires on a court holiday.
In terms of the aforesaid, the Court dismissed the appeal.
Case Title: M/S R. K. TRANSPORT COMPANY VERSUS M/S BHARAT ALUMINUM COMPANY LTD. (BALCO)
