RATIONALE
The court decided to make the date of delivery as the date of notification of the collection of the award owing to the expeditious nature of arbitration. Parties refer their disputes to arbitration for this reason. Additionally, the timelines under the Arbitration Act ought to be enforced as they are to maintain the swiftness of arbitration. The setting aside application was also nullified on grounds of finality of the award, which frowns upon the delay of enforcement of awards. Thus, the failure to pay an arbitrator on time or the subsequent applications made by parties after an award has been issued are not enough to delay the date of delivery of the award.
CASE RELEVANCE
- Section 35 (3) provides that an application to set aside an award should not be made after three months from the date on which the party received the award. The court construed the date of the receipt of the award to mean the date on which the arbitrator notifies the parties that the award is ready for collection. Thus, the time limit will be computed from the date on which the arbitrator notified the parties of the same.
- When computing the time under section 35 (3), parties are also given leeway to compute the time limit from the date on which they made a request to the tribunal under section 34. However, such a request must also be made within thirty days (or a number of days as agreed upon by the parties) from the date of delivery of the award. If not, the request will also be time barred.
In certain occasions, an arbitrator may publish an award but withhold it from the parties owing to their failure to pay the arbitrator’s fees. Nonetheless, failure to pay fees under section 32B does not delay the time of the delivery of the award, which is the date on which the arbitrator notifies the parties that the award is ready for collection
