J UDGMENT

1. By way of this petition under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 [hereinafter, “the Act”], the petitioner seeks setting aside of an Arbitral Award dated 19.10.2023 [hereinafter, “the Award”], by which the learned Sole Arbitrator has rejected his claims against the respondent under an agreement dated 30.12.2015.

A. The Agreement

2. The agreement between the parties, dated 30.12.2015, is entitled “NIIT License Agreement (Urban)” [hereinafter, “the Agreement”]. The respondent is engaged in the business of providing education in connection with operation of computers, offering courseware material and technical knowhow for setting up of computer education centres. The Agreement licenses the petitioner to use the respondent‟s trade names, designs, copyrights, technical knowhow and course materials, on a limited and non-exclusive basis, to set up an education centre in the territory of A.S. Rao Nagar, Hyderabad. The location of the proposed education centre is also provided in Schedule 1 of the Agreement. It is the petitioner‟s case that, pursuant to the Agreement, he incorporated a limited company which set up the education centre as required.

B. The Arbitral Proceedings

3. Disputes having arisen between the parties, the petitioner invoked arbitration by a letter dated 26.07.2017. The Arbitral Tribunal was constituted by an order of this Court dated 04.03.2022 in ARB.P. 447/2021. Although, the company set up by the petitioner was also originally impleaded as a party to the arbitration petition, it was deleted from the array of parties at the request of the petitioner.

4. Before the learned Arbitral Tribunal, the petitioner sought an award of Rs. 99.43 lakhs towards “losses suffered directly by the Claimant”, Rs. 35.42 lakhs being the “assured amount by NIIT prior to signing the License Agreement”, interest and costs.

5. Briefly stated, the claims were predicated upon the petitioner‟s allegation that the respondent had sold courseware to the petitioner at a higher rate than sold to a licensee in a neighbouring area; that the respondent resorted to “petty cheating” by rounding off amounts payable on account of GST; that the respondent did not permit the petitioner to approach institutes within its own territory or to offer discounts from his own share of earnings; that it poached the petitioner‟s students; and that it had earlier resorted to “legal terrorism” by appointing an arbitrator of its choice. In the impugned Award, the learned Arbitrator has also noted the case of the petitioner that his consent to enter into the Agreement was vitiated by the respondent‟s failure to disclose certain orders of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission [“MRTPC”] and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission [“NCDRC”] passed in the year 1988 and 2012, respectively, in which some observations had been made against the respondent. The petitioner also claimed that he had been unable to realise the assured profit indicated by the respondent [Rs. 35.42 lakhs in three years].

6. The respondent, in its statement of defence, took a preliminary objection against the maintainability of the claims at the instance of the petitioner, on account of the fact that the Agreement contemplated establishment of the education centre by the petitioner‟s company. It disputed breach of any of the terms and conditions of the Agreement and denied any assurance of fixed returns. The respondent also alleged that the petitioner has instituted numerous litigations against it before various forums and had started a campaign of defamation against the respondent, for which the respondent had filed a suit before this Court, i.e., CS(OS)

57/2018, which resulted in a consent decree dated 03.09.2019.

7. The petitioner examined himself as his only witness. Although he had filed affidavits of two other witnesses, they were not produced for cross-examination. The respondent also produced two witnesses before the Arbitral Tribunal, w