GATEWAY DISTRIPARKS LIMITED Vs. RANJIV KUMAR BHASIN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This judgment will dispose of the Section 34 Petition itself which I heard by consent at the stage of admission. The order will thus necessarily dispose of the Notice of Motion for stay.

(2.) The Petition assails a short award dated 6th December 2017 by a sole Arbitrator, Gulnar Mistry, an advocate of this Court. There is a single point canvassed in assailing this award. In view of the decisions of the Supreme Court in Ssangyong Engineering Construction Company Ltd vs National Highway Authority of India , (2019) 15 SCC 131. the argument is positioned in the only place it can be, the perversity dimension under the patent illegality head under Section 34 (2-A) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act , 1996.

(3.) As Ssangyong Engineering and previous authorities tell us, the perversity challenge has diferent facets. We are concerned here with only one of these, placed by Mr Kelkar for the Petitioners thus: that while the Arbitrator is undoubtedly the person to primarily interpret and construct the contract, he or she cannot do so in a manner that no fair-minded or unreasonable person would and cannot wonder beyond the confnes of the contract. This is pegged to an express pronouncement in these words in paragraph 40 of Ssangyong Engineering: