Composite arbitral awards involving claims and counter-claims require no separate petitions under Section 34.

The Petitioner, M/S Splendor Landbase Limited, filed a batch of five petitions under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“A&C Act”), assailing amended arbitral awards dated 05.07.2025

The Respondent raised a preliminary objection regarding the maintainability of the petitions, contending that challenges to claims and counter-claims must be filed through separate petitions rather than a singular proceeding

The Respondent argued that since an arbitral award is enforceable as a decree under Section 36(1) of the A&C Act, it must follow the procedural requirements of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”), where suits and counter-claims require separate appeals

Furthermore, the Respondent claimed that separating the challenges would impact the valuation, potentially placing the dispute outside the court's pecuniary jurisdiction

1. Whether an arbitral award, involving both claims and counter-claims arising from a common reference and factual matrix, must be challenged via separate petitions under Section 34 of the A&C Act.

2. Whether the legal fiction created by Section 36(1) of the A&C Act, which treats an award as a “decree” for enforcement, imports the procedural requirements of the CPC into the challenge stage under Section 34.

The court primarily applied Sections 34 and 36 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, distinguishing the A&C Act as a self-contained and special legislation aimed at minimal judicial intervention

It relied on the principle that the expression “as if” in Section 36(1) creates a legal fiction that must be construed strictly and confined to the purpose of enforcement and execution

The court further applied the principle that the A&C Act and the CPC operate in distinct fields with different legislative objectives, particularly noting that the scope of a Section 34 challenge is narrowly circumscribed to statutory grounds like patent illegality and natural justice, unlike the comprehensive merits-based rehearing of a first appeal under Section 96 of the CPC

The Court rejected the Respondent’s reliance on CPC-based precedents, observing that the A&C Act is a self-contained code where the legislative intent is to ensure finality and circumscribe court interference

The Court reasoned that an arbitral award does not ipso facto become a decree upon pronouncement; rather, Section 36(1) creates a narrow legal fiction purely to facilitate enforcement through the procedural machinery of the CPC

This fiction does not govern the challenge stage under Section 34, during which the award retains its distinct legal character and has not yet metamorphosed into a decree

The Court noted that the jurisdiction under Section 34 is limited to specific statutory grounds and does not permit a re-examination of merits, unlike a civil appeal

In the present case, since the claims and counter-claims arose from a singular reference with common evidence and documents, the Court found that fragmenting the challenge would be “artificial, unwarranted, and unduly cumbersome”

The Court clarified that the procedural requirements of the CPC regarding separate appeals for suits and counter-claims cannot be imported into the arbitral framework at the pre-enforcement stage

Consequently, the petitions were held maintainable in their present form, and the Court issued directions for filing rejoinders and scheduled the next hearing for 12.08.2026