A notice under Section 14(2) of the Arbitration Act is not mandatory if the party has knowledge of the filing of the award.

1. This appeal has been filed by the appellants, the State of Bihar and its officers against the order of the court below making an award rule of the court. The question of law which arises for consideration in this appeal is as to whether a notice under Sec.14(2) of the Arbitration Act (the Act) has got to be issued to the party who has himself filed the award.

2. The facts are that the respondent No.1 had entered into a contract for executing certain works of the Irrigation Department in the district of Dhanbad in the year 1966. Under the agreement contained in the arbitration clause on some difference arising between the parties, the dispute was referred to the named arbitrator, defendant No.3 who gave an award in favour of the plaintiff for a sum of Rs.1,14,715/-. The plaintiff made an application for making the award a rule of the court.

3. The plaintiff had impleaded in the proceeding besides the arbitrator, the State of Bihar and the Superintending Engineer, Hazaribagh and the Executive Engineer, Dhanbad as defendants Nos.1, 2 and 4 respectively. It appears that defendants Nos.1, 2 and 4 had appeared jointly through the Additional Government Pleader, Dhanbad and had earlier filed a plain copy of the award. The court then directed defendant No.4 to either file himself or get filed through the Arbitrator the original award which was ultimately filed on 16-7-1974 through defendant No.4. Obviously, it must be through the Additional Government Pleader. On 1-8-1974, however, an application for time was made on behalf of the State of Bihar for filing objection to the award on the ground that it had no earlier knowledge of the filing of the award. The prayer was also formally allowed and objection was filed on 22-8-1974. However, at the time of hearing, an exception was taken on behalf of the plaintiff that in view of the mandatory provisions of S.14 of the Arbitration Act read with Art.119 of the Limitation Act, the objection must have been filed within the prescribed period of 30 days and the same having been filed much beyond the said time, it could not be looked into. Undisputedly, no notice of the filing of the award separately had been issued by the court to the defendants and an argument was advanced in the trial court as well as before this court that issuance of the notice was mandatory and inasmuch as no notice was issued, time had not started to run for the purpose of filing of the objection to the Award and, therefore, the objection filed, as mentioned above, was much within time.

4. The learned Additional Subordinate Judge has, overruled the plea of the defendants on the ground that on the facts mentioned above, no notice was necessary to be issued as the Award in question had been filed by the defendants themselves. Accordingly, it ordered for accepting the award and making it a rule of the court. The appellants have accordingly filed the present appeal.

5. Mr. J.P. Shukla, learned Government Pleader No.2, as already said earlier, has made an argument that issuing a notice within the scheme of Sec.14(2) of the Arbitration Act was mandatory. It is no doubt true that sub-section (2) of Sec.14 of the Arbitration Act enjoins upon the court to give notice of the filing of the award and similarly clause (b) of Article 119 of the Limitation Act also prescribes a period of 30 days for filing an application for setting aside an award or getting an award remitted for reconsideration "from the date of service of the notice of the filing of the award", but it must be held that if the aggrieved party has already got knowledge of the filing of the award, as in the present case, where the award was filed by defendant No.4, who had appeared in the proceeding jointly with the State of Bihar, separate notice of the filing of the award is not necessary to be issued. A Bench of this Court as far back as in 1927 in the case of Bholanath Roy V/s. Bata Krishna Roy (AIR 1927 Pat 135) observed that "the materiality of the service