Section 34 courts cannot reappreciate evidence to disturb plausible arbitral findings.

NHAI accepted the Petitioner’s bid for road repair and maintenance work under an agreement dated 21 December 2005.

The Petitioner claimed that it carried out additional work and repairs, and sought payment of various amounts, including the release of its security deposit and performance security.

NHAI encashed the performance bank guarantee, maintaining that defects remained unrectified.

The arbitral tribunal’s majority award rejected all the Petitioner’s claims; the Petitioner challenged that award under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.

The Petitioner argued, among other things, that the tribunal had disregarded evidence and reached perverse or patently illegal conclusions.

NHAI opposed the petition as an impermissible request to reappreciate evidence.

1. Whether the majority award rejecting the claims for additional work and repairs was liable to be set aside under Section 34 for patent illegality or perversity.

2. Whether the tribunal’s refusal to direct release of the security deposit and performance security warranted interference under Section 34.

3. Whether the rejection of the remaining claims, including those for loss of goodwill, business loss, breach of contract and interest, warranted interference under Section 34.

Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 confines judicial review of arbitral awards to the statutory grounds and does not permit an appellate reassessment of facts, evidence or contractual interpretation.

A plausible view taken by the tribunal is not to be displaced merely because another view is possible; the tribunal is ordinarily the master of the evidence and of interpreting the contract.

Under Section 34(2A), patent illegality must go to the root of the matter and is distinct from a mere erroneous application of law; reappreciation of evidence is impermissible, though a finding based on no evidence or an award ignoring vital evidence may constitute perversity [*Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. v. NHAI*, (2019) 15 SCC 131].

The Court also relied on *M.P. Road Development Corpn. Ltd. v. Jabalpur Corridor (P) Ltd.*, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1001, and *Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai v. R.V. Anderson Associates Ltd.*, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 354, for the limited scope of Section 34 review.

The tribunal had found insufficient material to establish that the Petitioner performed extra-contractual work and treated the repairs during the defect-liability period as falling within the contractual scope.

The Court considered the challenge to those findings an attempt to revisit the evidence, and found no demonstrated patent illegality.

On the security claims, the tribunal relied on joint inspection reports indicating that defects remained unrectified and applied Clause 44.2, which tied release of the security amounts to completion of the defect-liability period and certification that notified defects had been corrected.

The Court held that reassessing the competing documents would exceed Section 34’s scope; it also found the tribunal’s view under Clause 44.3 on retention money to be plausible.

Because the tribunal’s findings on the underlying claims stood, the Court found no basis to disturb its rejection of the consequential claims for goodwill, business loss, breach of contract and interest.

The award rejecting the Petitioner’s claims therefore remained undisturbed; pending applications, if any, were also dismissed.