A partnership firm must have all partners join legal actions; failure to do so renders applications non-maintainable. The court emphasized the need to provide sufficient cause for any delay in filing appeals.

ORDER :

P.B. Balaji, J.

The Revision Petitioner challenges the dismissal of a condone delay application in preferring an appeal against an order passed under Section 8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (in short ‘Act’)

2. I have heard Mr.Arjun Suresh, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr.T.Sundaranathan for Mr.Surendrakumar Panda, learned counsel for the contesting first respondent.

3. The learned counsel for the petitioner, Mr.Arjun Suresh would bring to my notice that in a pending suit in O.S. No.113 of 2021, an Application was filed in I.A. No.1 of 2024, under Section 8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, in and where by the revision petitioner, as defendant, took out an application to refer the suit to Arbitration. The Trial Court dismissed the Application by order dated 14.03.2024. After receipt of the copy of the order on 12.04.2024, according to the learned counsel for the petitioner instead of preferring an appeal before the District Court, by mistake, filed an Appeal before this Court, along with an application to condone the delay of 37 days in filing the appeal. Inviting my attention to the order passed by this Court on 05.03.2025, rejecting the appeal, learned counsel for the petitioner would state that this Court has made it clear that the petitioner would be entitled to take out an Application under Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 to exclude the time taken before the High Court in prosecuting the matter.

4. The learned counsel would further state that thereafter, after receipt of the copy of the order passed by this Court, within a period of one month, without any undue delay, the appeal was preferred before the learned District Judge along with an application seeking to condone delay of 37 days. He would therefore state that there is no willful or malafide inaction on the part of the petitioner and in the light of the liberty granted by this Court to exclude the time spent or lost before this Court, by wrongly knocking at the doors of this Court, the learned counsel contends that the learned District Judge ought to have construed the request liberally and condoned the delay, in order to afford a fair opportunity to the petitioner to challenge the order dismissing the Section 8 Application.

5. Per contra, learned counsel for the first respondent Mr.T.Sundaranathan, would firstly state that the petitioner is a partnership Firm and all its partners have already been set exparte and therefore, the petitioner has no legs to stand to even sustain the challenge by way of the revision petition. He would further state that the partners have also not joined the filing of the revision petition and it is fatal to the case of the revision petitioner. Even on the aspect of delay, the learned counsel for the first respondent would state that the petitioner has not re-filed the papers that were incorrectly filed before this Court and take advantage of Section 14 of the Limitation Act and instead the petitioner has filed an independent application for condonation of delay, that too, arbitrarily fixing the delay as 37 days. According to the learned counsel for the first respondent, the delay is much more and can never be 37 days, which is a figment of imagination of the petitioner alone. He would therefore state that the Trial Court has rightly factored all these aspects and dismissed the condone delay application. He would therefore pray for the dismissal of the revision petition.

6. I have carefully considered the submissions advanced by the learned counsel on either side.

7. As regards the partners being set exparte and the revision at the instance of the Firm not being maintainable, I find that in the suit in O.S. No.113 of 2021, the petitioner Firm has been arrayed as the first defendant and its partners are arrayed as defendants 2 to 5. Admittedly the partners remained exparte and the same is not disputed even by the learned counsel for the petitioner. However, an Application was taken out only