Supreme Court - Daily Orders
M/S Steel Authority Of India vs M/S Ores India Private Limited on 2 May, 2025
D.No.11650/2025
ITEM NO.40 COURT NO.13 SECTION XVII
S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
MISCELLANEOUS APPLICATION Diary No.11650/2025
[Arising out of impugned final judgment and order dated 03-11-2023
in SLP(C) No. No. 24992/2023 passed by the Supreme Court of India]
M/S STEEL AUTHORITY OF INDIA Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
M/S ORES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED Respondent(s)
Date : 02-05-2025 This petition was called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE J.B. PARDIWALA
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE R. MAHADEVAN
For Petitioner(s) : By Courts Motion, AOR
Mr. Rupesh Kumar, Sr. Adv.
Ms. Pankhuri Shrivastava, Adv.
Ms. Neelam Sharma, AOR
Mr. Alekshendra Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Aditya Kumar, Adv.
For Respondent(s) :
Mr. Navin Pahwa, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Vivek Singh, AOR
Mr. Ritik Dwivedi, Adv.
UPON hearing the counsel the Court made the following
O R D E R
Signature Not Verified Digitally signed by CHANDRESH Date: 2025.05.02 18:28:48 IST 1 Reason: D.No.11650/2025
1. Delay condoned.
2. Our order dated 4.4.2025 reads thus:-
“1. This matter has been notified today as the registry has received report from the Retired Principal District and Sessions Judge of Jharkhand. The main matter came to be disposed of vide a order dated
03.10.2023 in the following terms:-
“1 Delay condoned.
2 The arbitral award was concurrently challenged in a petition under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 and, in an appeal, under Section 37.
Both the petition under Section 34 and appeal under Section 37 have been rejected.
3 Bearing in mind the limitations on judicial interference with arbitral awards in terms of the settled principles of law, we do not find any justification for this Court to interfere with the award per se.
4 We have heard Mr R Venkataramani, Attorney General for India and Mr Ranjit Kumar, senior counsel for the respondent.
5 The Attorney General submitted that in paragraph 31 of the award, the arbitrator has not quantified the exact amount of escalation due and payable to the respondent, having left it to mutual settlement between the parties on the basis of the interpretation placed by the arbitrator on clause 12.1.4 dealing with the expression “minimum wage”. It has been urged that the exact quantum was a matter in dispute; the reason why the parties went to arbitration was because they were not able to resolve the dispute between them.
6 In order to allay the grievance of the petitioner, we had enquired from the counsel as to whether it would be appropriate that the exact quantification is entrusted to a former District Judge in the service of the Jharkhand Higher Judicial Service so as to curtail the possibility of any dispute in regard to the exact amount due and payable under the award.
7 Both the Attorney General and Mr Ranjit Kumar have agreed to the proposal.
8 We accordingly request the Chief Justice of the High Court of Jharkhand in pursuance of this order to nominate a former District Judge of the Higher Judicial Service of 2 D.No.11650/2025 Jharkhand, who will carry out the computation in terms of the award of the arbitrator in the present case. 9 We would request the Chief Justice of the High Court of Jharkhand to carry out this exercise preferably within a period of two weeks from the date on which a certified copy of this order is transmitted by the Registrar (Judicial) of this Court to the Registrar General of the High Court of Jharkhand.
10 Both the parties shall, upon nomination of a former District Judge, file their respective calculations within a period of four weeks thereafter.
11. The nominated officer shall conclude the exercise and issue his order within a period of two months from the date of the first meeting. The fees payable to the nominated officer shall be determined after mutual consultation with the petitioner and the respondent. 12 Subject to the above, the Special Leave Petition is disposed of.
13 Pending application, if any, stands disposed of.
2. In pursuance of the aforesaid, the nominated officer i.e. Retired Principal District and Sessions Judge was supposed to undertake the computation in terms of the award of the arbitrator. The nominated officer has completed the exercise as directed and has filed its report.
3. Paras 22, 23, 24 and 25 respectively, read thus:-
"22. So far as the correctness of the calculation of the respondent is concerned the appellant has not raised any convincing objection. An opportunity was provided to the parties to point out any discrepancy in the calculation sheet of the other party. Save and except what would be the denominator, no other substantial objection was raised by the parties. As held above the calculation sheet of the respondent would reveal that they have applied the right denominator at arriving at their final calculation and the same appears to be correct.
23. I must hasten to add here that the undersigned has no special knowledge of computation or accounting. Moreover, only the calculation sheet has been filed by the parties on the basis of their inputs on their understanding of the terms of the award. As held above the formula applied by the appellant is not as per the terms of the award or as per Clause 12.1.4 of the scope of Work and Terms & Conditions of the Contract dated 18th April 2003 whereas the computation of the respondent is as per terms of the award and as per Clause 12.1.4 of the scope of Work and Terms & Conditions of the Contract dated 18th April 2003.3 D.No.11650/2025
As discussed above only the methodology of computation was mainly in dispute between the parties. The correctness of the computation of the respondent as detailed out in “Annexure B”, so far as it relates to input data, has not been seriously disputed by the appellant. As held above the appellant had never disputed the statistical data furnished by the respondent to the appellant on monthly basis regarding the expenses incurred by it in defraying the various expenses relating to execution of the contractual work. The Ld. Arbitrator in his award has categorically rejected this argument of the appellant. Thus, in my opinion the calculation sheet filed by responded "Annexure B" appears to be correct and the appellant is bound to make the payment.
24. The only thing remains to be computed is the interest accrued on the differential amount. There is no dispute with regard to rate of interest. The Ld. Arbitrator in his award vide paragraph 34 and 35 has held as under
34. On the differential amounts which the claimant would be entitled to, I award an interest at the rate of 9% per annum from the due dates of payment as this is reasonable and direct that payment be made within two months of making and publishing the award.
35. The award sum will carry an interest @9% per annum till it is fully satisfied.
The interest component can be finally computed when the final payment is to be made by the appellant. This cannot be computed at this stage as date of final payment lies in the domain of future. In my opinion this would pose no problem to the parties.
25. This report is accordingly being submitted to the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India for kind consideration and needful."
3. Mr. Rupesh Kumar, the learned senior counsel appearing for the steel Authority has a serious grievance to redress as regards the manner in which the retired Principal District and Sessions Judge Jharkhand as a nominated officer undertook the computation.
4. Mr. Rupesh Kumar would like to file his objections to the report.
5. Let the objections come on record. One copy of the objections shall be furnished to the other side within a period of two weeks.
4 D.No.11650/20256. It shall be open for the other side to file its reply to the objections that may be filed by the Steel Authority of India within a period of one week.
7. Post this matter after three weeks.”
3. In pursuance of our Order the petitioner M/s. Steel Authority of India has filed its objections to the report dated 25.12.2024 of the Learned(retired) Principal District and Sessions Judge, Jharkhand nominated for the purpose of computation in terms of the Award passed by the Arbitrator.
4. The report dated 25.12.2024 of the Learned(retired) Principal District and Sessions Judge, Jharkhand be taken on record.
5. The objections to the report referred to above be also taken on record.
6. We heard Mr. Rupesh Kumar, the learned counsel appearing for the applicant and Mr. Navin Pahwa, the learned counsel appearing for the respondent. We have also looked into the objections.
7. Having regard to the fact that the original Award passed by the Arbitral Tribunal has been affirmed upto this Court, the only issue that remains is that of computation.
8. If we go by the case put up by the petitioner so far as quantification part is concerned and if we go further into the objections perhaps we would be rewriting the entire award which we do not want to do more particularly when the award has been 5 D.No.11650/2025 affirmed right up to this Court.
9. In the result, this miscellaneous application fails and is hereby dismissed.
10. Pending application(s), if any, stand disposed of.
(CHANDRESH) (POOJA SHARMA)
ASTT. REGISTRAR-cum-PS COURT MASTER (NSH)
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