STATE OF JHARKHAND REP.BY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF IRRIGATION, GOVERNMENT OF JHARKHAND Vs. CHHOTANAGPUR BRICK WORKS THROUGH ITS PROPRIETOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD .

(2.) EVEN before the arbitrator had filed the award in Court, the first respondent herein and the parties to the contract had filed an application which was registered as Miscellaneous Case No. 4 of 1997 in the Subordinate Judges Court at. Seraikella raising objections to the award. That miscellaneous application was numbered as Title Suit No. 11 of 1997. It was dismissed on the ground that it was premature and that an objection to the award cannot be filed in Court before the award itself was filed in Court. That order was challenged by the first respondent herein in Civil Revision No. 421 of 1999.

(3.) THE fact that the objection filed by the first respondent numbered as Miscellaneous Case No. 4 of 1997 and renumbered as Title Suit No. 11 of 1997, stood dismissed was clear to this Court even when it passed the original order, since the revision itself was against the order of dismissal of that suit or objection on the ground that it was premature. Therefore, the fact that Title Suit No. 1 -1 of 1997 stood dismissed when this Court passed the order, is not a fact which was not within the knowledge of this Court when it passed the original order, on 14.1.2000 and the subsequent order on 29.11.2000. It may be remembered that the dismissal of Title Suit No. 11 of 1997 was only on the ground that it was premature in the sense that an objection to an award was sought to be filed even before the award itself was filed in Court. Therefore, this Court, on application of mind, had directed that the said premature objection should be treated as an objection to the award which was subsequently filed in Court. May be, the objection should have been filed within thirty days of the notice of the filing of the award. Here what had happened was that one of the parties to the award had rushed -to the Court with an objection even before the award itself was filed in Court. This Court obviously thought that since the objection had been filed with due diligence, possibly with too much diligence, in the sense it was filed even before the award itself Was filed, the same could be treated as on objection to the award filed in time. Therefore, nothing turns on the fact now projected that .Title Suit No. 11 of 1997 stood dismissed on the day this Court disposed of the revision on 14.1.2000.