J U D G M E N T

1. This petition is filed under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (for short ‘the Act’) against the arbitral award dated 09.05.2023 (for brevity ‘award’).

2. The facts shorn of unnecessary detail are that the respondent invited tender for procurement, supply, trenching, laying, installation, testing and maintenance of optical fiber cable (OFC), PLB duct and accessories for construction of Exclusive Optical National Long Distance (NLD) backbone and optical access routes on turnkey basis for defence network. The Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) was for seven packages. The petitioner was successful bidder for package ‘A’ for the State of Jammu and Kashmir of the NTP region and consisted of laying 9,495 kms of cable. The work was to be executed link-wise with each link to be installed and commissioned separately.

2.1 The dispute in the present case is only with regard to 547 kms of cables laid in a common trench having multiple ducts (hereinafter referred to as ‘MDC’).

2.2 On a pre-bid query clarification no.160 was issued by the respondent stating that twenty-five percent of the quoted rate for services shall be paid for the cable laid through existi