MANNA LAL KEDIA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This civil revision by the defendants is directed against an order by which the Court below has rejected their application for referring the dispute to the Arbitrator and stay of further proceedings in the suit.

(2.) The plaintiffs-opposite party, State of Bihar and its officials, filed Money Suit No.2 of 1995 for recovery of the price of 294.12 M.T. steel slabs equivalent to 264.715 M.T. of M.S. rod or its present market price According to the plaintiffs, the defendants had entered into an agreement for delivery / supply of 264.715M.T. of M.S. rod but failed to make the delivery causing pecuniary loss to the State. On 9-9-96 the petitioners filed an application to dismiss the suit as not maintainable on the ground of limitation. On 9-12-96 they filed another application under sec.8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, describing the same as supp-lementary application to the application dated 9-10-96, wherein they made a prayer for appointment of the concerned Superintending Engineer as Arbitrator and to refer the dispute to him. I shall refer to these two applications again in this order. The Court below in the impugned order held that an application for reference of the dispute to the Arbitrator under the new Arbitration Act i.e. Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, (hereinafter called 'the Act') has to be made before the filing of the 'first statement' and since in the application filed on 9-9-96 no such prayer to refer the dispute for arbitration was made, rather a prayer was made to dismiss the suit on the ground of limitation, the prayer could not be allowed. He accordingly rejected the application by the impugned order dated 18-9-98.

(3.) Before proceeding further it would be apt to notice the provisions of Sec.8 of the Act so far as relevant, as follows :