JUDGMENT :

Instant appeal filed under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act,1966 ( for short ‘Act’), lays challenge to order/ judgment dated 6.4.2021, passed by learned District Judge, Shimla, District Shimla, H.P., in CMP No.48-S/6 of 2020, titled as The State of Himachal Pradesh and another versus Sh. Sanjay Chauhan, whereby an application under Section 34(3) of the Act, having been filed by the appellants, praying therein for condonation of delay in filing the objections under Section 34 of the Act, came to be dismissed.

2. Ms. Srishti Verma, Advocate, appears and waives service of notice on behalf of the respondent. Before the case at hand could be heard and decided on its own merit, learned Senior counsel representing the respondent while inviting attention of this Court to the judgment dated 23.11.2021, passed by Co-Ordinate Bench of this Court in Arbitration Appeal No.31 of 2021, titled as The State of Himachal Pradesh versus Sh. Bal Krishan, submits that instant appeal having been filed by the appellant-State deserves to be rejected in the light of aforesaid judgment rendered by Coordinate Bench of this Court.

3. Though, Mr. Desh Raj Thakur, learned Additional Advocate General, made an attempt to carve out a case that facts of the case at hand are disguisable from the case relied upon by counsel representing the respondent, but having carefully perused judgment rendered by Co-Ordinate Bench of this Court, as detailed hereinabove, this Court finds no merit in the submission of learned Additional Advocate General and same deserves outright rejection.

4. The facts of the case as emerge from the record are that the appellants being aggrieved and dissatisfied with award dated 1st October, 2019, passed by learned Arbitrator, filed objections under Section 34 of the Act. Since, objections were filed beyond period of limitation, an application under Section 34(3) came to be filed alongwith the objections, seeking therein condonation of delay in the Court of learned District Judge, Shimla, but fact remains that aforesaid application, as detailed hereinabove, was dismissed vide order dated 6.4.2021, as a consequence of which, objections filed by the appellants also came to be dismissed. In the aforesaid background, appellant-State has approached this Court in the instant appeal.

5. In the case at hand, arbitration award was passed on 1st October, 2019 and copy thereof was made available on the same day to the parties to the lis and as such, being aggrieved and dissatisfied, if any, with the award, party intending to file objections under section 34 of the Act, was under obligation to file the same within a period of three months in terms of provision contained under Section 34(3) of the Act, but in the case at hand record reveals that appellants being aggrieved and dissatisfied with the award, filed objections on 17.2.2020, which was admittedly beyond the period of three months from passing of the award by the learned Arbitrator and as such, an application under Section 36(4) of the Act came to be filed, seeking therein condonation of delay.

6. At this stage, it would be profitable to take note of provision contained under Section 34(3) of the Act hereinbelow:-

“Section 34(3) in THE ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION ACT, 1996 (3) An application for setting aside may not be made after three months have elapsed from the date on which the party making that application had received the arbitral award or, if a request had been made under section 33, from the date on which that request had been disposed of by the arbitral tribunal: Provided that if the Court is satisfied that the applicant was prevented by sufficient cause from making the application within the said period of three months it may entertain the application within a further period of thirty days, but not thereafter.”

7. Careful perusal of aforesaid provisions of law clearly reveals that an application for setting aside arbitration award may not be made after three months