JUDGMENT :

1. In all these petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners have prayed that this Court be pleased to issue a writ of prohibition and/or any other appropriate writ, order or direction restraining the Court of Additional District Judge, Kutch, at Gandhidham from entertaining and proceeding further with the applications filed by the concerned respondents under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, (‘the Act’ for short) by which, the respondents have challenged the arbitral awards in the respective arbitration proceedings.

2. The question that is raised in these petitions is whether the District Court is having the jurisdiction to entertain an application under Section 34 of the Act for challenging an award when the award is an outcome of an International Commercial Arbitration admittedly held in London with an express provision in the Arbitration Clause embodied in the concerned agreement to the effect that the arbitration shall be governed by the English law.

3. For the purposes of this judgement, since the facts are common, facts of Special Civil Application No.285 of 2010 are considered.

3.1 The petitioner is a foreign compa