JUDGMENT :

Munishwar Nath Bhandari, J.

Prayer: APPEAL under Section 13(1) of the Commercial Courts Act read with Section 37(1)(c) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act against the order dated 09.8.2021 made in O.P.No.306 of 2015.

1. This appeal under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (for short, the Act) is directed against the order dated 09.8.2021 in O.P.No.306 of 2015 passed under Section 34 of the Act.

2. We have heard the learned Senior Counsel appearing on behalf of the appellant.

3. The facts on record show that a contract was entered into between the appellant and the respondent, for construction of service road and foot path on LHS and RHS in Rajiv Gandhi Salai (IT Corridor), Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The relevant dates, which include the date of commencement of work and the period for its completion, have been indicated in paragraph 3 of the impugned order. It appears that after commencement of the work, since the appellant failed to show progress as was required and committed several breaches, the respondent terminated the contract. At the instance of the appellant, the matter was referred to a Three Member Arbitral Tribunal (for brevity, the Arbitral Tribunal) wherein the appellant sought to declare the termination notice dated 30.11.2010 to be arbitrary, illegal and premature and to direct the respondent to pay a sum of Rs.7.68 Crores together with interest at 12% from the date of filing of claim statement till the date of payment.

4. The appellant appeared to have completed only 17% of the work and from the inception, the work was slow and therefore, the contract was terminated by the respondent.

5. The parties led evidence before the Arbitral Tribunal and it was thoroughly examined by the Arbitral Tribunal and accordingly, an award came to be passed on 02.8.2014.

6. Aggrieved by the award passed by the Arbitral Tribunal, the appellant filed a petition before this Court under Section 34 of the Act. However, it came to be dismissed by the impugned order by a learned Single Judge of this Court, which resulted in filing of this appeal under Section 37 of the Act.

7. The first limb of argument of the learned Senior Counsel appearing for the appellant is with regard to the difference of amount of the remaining work, required to be paid to the respondent. It is her further submission that the award passed by both the Arbitral Tribunal as well as the order passed by the learned Single Judge were not in terms of the contract. It is argued that there was no clause in the contract, so as to recover the difference of amount of the remaining work, if assigned to other party. According to her, the amount was not determined by taking into consideration the value of the remaining work in view of the fact that the total contract amount was for Rs.31,75,30,560/-, out of which, the appellant completed work for Rs.2.2 Crores and the remaining 83% of the work could not be given on the value of Rs.45.33 crores. Rather, it could have been only on the balance amount of Rs.29.55 Crores (Rs.31.75 Crores - Rs.2.20 Crores). Accordingly, a challenge to recovery of the difference of the amount of the remaining work has been made.

8. The learned Senior Counsel further submits that this is mainly on the ground that without calling for bids with competitive rates by evolving a transparent procedure of the bids, the contract was given to a company namely M/s.SPL Infrastructure Private Limited (for brevity, M/s. SPL) and without examining the fact that the contract was on an inflated cost and not on realistic costs, the award was passed. It is further submitted that the Arbitral Tribunal could not have awarded the difference of amount by taking it on a sum of Rs.45.33 Crores, for which, the remaining work was assigned to the said M/s.SPL. The learned Senior Counsel appearing for the appellant has sought to set aside the impugned order.

9. To examine the first limb of the argument raised before us, we have carefully gone through the recor