BHATIA INTERNATIONAL LIMITED Vs. VITOL S A GENEVA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Review Petition has been filed by the petitioner who is aggrieved of the order passed by this court in having allowed the Civil Revision filed by the respondent and holding that in view of the Clause-19 of the Agreement reached between the parties for referring that the dispute to arbitration and which arbitration resulted in foreign award, do not permit filing of objections to the award under section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 ( hereinafter referred to as " the Act " ) in Indian Court, in as much as three conditions of the exclusion Clauses do not allow any of the parties to file an objection to the award. The only exclusion which were agreed between the parties were approaching the Indian Courts.

(2.) After the dispute arose between the parties, the matter was referred to arbitration. The arbitration took place outside India and the award was also given outside India, thus it is a foreign award. As per Clause-19 of the Arbitration Agreement, the award except for the conditions given in the exclusion Clauses were to be governed by the foreign law and not by the Indian law.

(3.) After the arbitration concluded, award was given against M/s Bhatia International Limited vide award dated 17th of January, 2011. Vitol S.A Geneva, Switzerland also filed an application for enforcement of the award in Bombay. After the notice was issued, the petitioner filed objections before the District Judge, Indore under section 34 of the Act. The respondent received a notice of the aforesaid objections. The respondent instead of filing reply to the objections preferred to file an application under section 151 of C.P.C wherein it was pointed out that the objections were not maintainable as the filing of the objection was not covered by exclusion Clause-19 of the Agreement which is reproduced hereunder for the sake of reference.