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(4) Broadly the plea before the arbitrator by the appellant was that he had not defaulted in the execution of the work. It was also the plea of the appellant (and this was urged before us by Mr. Marwah, the counsel for the appellant) that no rates were fixed for the extra work, the decision for which, had been taken in November 1957 and until the rates were so fixed the appellant could not be expected to carry on the work and therefore apart from the fact that there was in fact no delay, but even if there was delay the fault could not be of the appellant. The respondent/union of India however throughout maintained that the fault was of the appellant, its case was that the rates had been fixed for extra work and that on 17-6-1959 a certain time table for completing the work had been agreed to mutually which was to be adhered to in view of the delays that had already taken place in the completion of the work. The arbitrator has allowed the respondents' claim but rejected the appellant's claim which means that according to the arbitrator the plea of the appellant that there was no delay or that no rates were fixed for extra work or that he had suffered damages for delays and failure in sanctioning the rates for additional and substituted items of work was not substantiated. Mr. Marwah sought to urge before us that in fact the rates were never settled and therefore the arbitrator was wrong in finding that the appellant was at fault. He urged that appellant had carried out the work in time and there was no justification for the action of the department in rescinding the contract and taking action against him under clause 3 as was purported to be done by the Executive Engineer by his letter of 7-9-1959. The whole effort of Mr. Marwah was to persuade us to reappraise and peruse for ourselves the various documents and evidence led before the arbitrator and then to come to our own independent conclusion as to the justification or otherwise of the action taken by the department and about the claims both of the department as well as of the appellants. Though Mr. Marwah insisted on taking us through the various documents, communications and material before the arbitrator but we feel that this exercise was in law a futility. We say this because the court does not sit as an appellate court over the award by the arbitrator. An award can be set aside if there is a judicial misconduct by the arbitrator or if there is an error apparent on the face of the award. A bald allegation of misconduct is of no consequence. A party challenging the award on this .ground must give specific particulars and they are woefully lacking in the present case. Mr. Marwah of course urged that he was challenging the award within the limitation of the rule of there being an error on the face of the award. But the difficulty was that what Mr. Marwah characterised as only an effort to show error on face of award was in reality an effort to make us function as an appellate court over the award. That is why we feel that though we were taken through the whole record by Mr. Marwah it would not be proper for us to reappraise the evidence for ourselves. It is well settled that it is not open to the Court to speculate, where no reasons are given by the arbitrator, as to what impelled the arbitrator to arrive at his conclusion. On the assumption that the arbitrator must have arrived at his conclusion by a certain process of reasoning, the Court cannot proceed to determine whether the conclusion is right or wrong. It is not open to the Court to attempt to probe the mental process by which the arbitrator has reached his conclusion where it is not disclosed by the terms of his award; vide Jivarajbhai Ujamshi Sheth and others V. Chintamanrao Balaji and others .

(6) Mr. Marwah also sought to contend that rate for the extra work had not been fixed and the appellant could not therefore be proceeded against under clause Ii or III. No doubt that the appellant had mentioned in one of the correspondences complaining that the rate which the department had given was less and should be enhanced. But the department had repudiated the suggestion that the rates for extra work were not fixed and maintained in its letter of 7-9-1959 that rates had been fixed and that for one small item for which rate was being finalised payment had been made at the agreement rate and that the balance, if any, being a very small item will be payable to him. We are mentioning this not with a view to evaluating whether the 'stand of the appellant or of the Union of India was correct because that is not our function. We are making a mention of this only to show that this aspect of the matter was brought to the notice of the arbitrator and therefore when he gave award in favor of the respondent, he obviously found that the appellant was to blame for the delay. Mr. Marwah characterises the award as perverse and being without any evidence and says that because such an allegation is made it entitles the court to go through the whole record of the arbitration proceedings and find for itself whether there is some material on the face of which an award could have been given. Mr. Marwah would have the jurisdiction of this court under the Arbitration Act to be analogous atteast to that of a court in its extraordinary jurisdiction in writ proceedings so that the court should go through the record of the arbitretor with a view to find out whether in arriving ;it its conclusion there was some material on the basis of which it could have given its award. This however, is not within the ambit of the court under the Arbitration Act. It is well settled that the Umpire as sole arbitrator was not bound to give a reasoned award and if in passing the award he makes a mistake of law or of fact, that is no ground for challenging the validity of the award. It is only when a proposition of law is stated in the award and which is the basis of the award, and that is erroneous, can the award be set aside or remitted on the ground of error of law apparent on the face of the record; and it is also well settled that the Court has no jurisdiction to investigate into the merits of the case and to examine the documentary and oral evidence on the record for the purpose of finding out, whether or not the arbitrator has committed an error of law: vide N. Chellappan V. Kerala S.E. Board .

(9) Mr. Marwah had referred to K. P. Poulose v- State of Kerala and another . That case is clearly distinguishable. In that case the award was a speaking one and gave the reasons for its decision against the contractor. The dispute was whether the process of jetting was an authorised extra covered by the agreement or not. The arbitrator had in its award at one place stated that Jetting is not an authorised extra covered by the agreement but it also found the Chief Engineer's rejection of the claim of the contractor for being paid extra for Jetting on the ground of non-inclusion of Jetting in the agreement by specifically relying upon that very letter wherein the issue of extra payment for jetting was left open even after the execution of the agreement. The Supreme Court found this conclusion of the arbitrator rejecting the claim of the contractor for extra payment for jetting to be rationally inconsistent and therefore suffering from a manifest error apparent ex facie. It was in that context that the Supreme. Court noticed that there were two documents Ex. P-11 and P-16 which clearly had great relevancy to the matter in issue decided by the arbitrator and therefore observed that if the arbitrator on the face of the award arrives at an inconsiatent conclusion even on his own finding or arrives at a decision by ignoring very material documents which throw abundant light on the controversy to help a just and fair decision, the award will be vitiated. This case does not Jay down as Mr. Marwah sought to Urge that the court can go through the evidence on its own and come to its own independent conclusion, an argument rejected consistently by the Supreme Court, as is clear from some of the authorities noticed previously. Reference was made to The Upper Ganges Valley Electricity Supply Co. Ltd. v. The U.P. Electricity Board . Tins case is also distinguishable. In that case it was a speaking award. The court found that in giving the compensation the Umpire had made calculations for arriving at the market value of appellant's undertaking and had expressly excluded the value of the portion of services installed at the cost of consumers. This exclusion was against the provisions of the Indian Electricity Act and it was for that reason that it was held that the award was erroneous on its face. As a matter of fact it was reiterated in para 10 that an award is ordinarily not liable to be set aside on the ground that either on facts or on law it is erroneous. This contention of Mr. Marwah, therefore, fails.

(14) Mr. Marwah. next wanted to invoke Section 55 of the Contract Act which provides that if a party to a Contract fails to do certain thing at a specified time the contract becomes voidable at the option of the promiseand in that case if the promiseaccepts performance of such promise at any time other than that agreed, the promisecannot claim compensation for any loss occasioned by the non-performance of the promise at the time agreed. Again this argument suffers from infirmity of assuming that there was an agreement not to hold the appellant responsible for the breach of contract in the matter of delay which had been occasioned earlier to 17-6-1959. Not only this is not so, but the correspondence shows that the case of the government was that even after 17-6-1959 the Contractor had committed breach. The question of invoking Section 55, therefore, could not arise because in terms of clause 2 the delay to comply with the time condition renders the contractor liable to pay compensation for every day that the due quantity of work remains incomplete. The mere fact that the contractor carries on work after having committed a default does not mean that the previous default has been washed off. He still remains liable in terms of the contract clause. Mr. Marwah refers us to clause 12 of the contract. The argument being that though this clause permits the Engineer-in-charge to direct the contractor to carry on the additional work but it also permits that in case the extra work is of a class of work for which no rate is specified in the contract, and is not entered into the schedule of rates, then the contractor will inform the Engineer- in-charge of the rate which he intends to charge and the Engineer-in-charge, if he does not agree to the rate, shall be at liberty to carry out such class of work that may appear to him to be necessary or advisable. We do not appreciate the relevancy of reference to this clause, because the rates had already been agreed to at which, the contractor was to work as is clear from the evidence which was read out by Mr. Marwah himself. Again this is a matter relating to the question whether in fact the rates were agreed to or not. The arbitrator has found the contractor responsible for the delay in carrying out the work which evidently means that the pleading that the rates had not been agreed to by the contractor and therefore he could not be blamed for any fault was not accepted by the arbitrator and we cannot hold an enquiry on our own into the correctness of this finding. ' (15) As a result of the above we find no merit in the appeal. We dismiss the same. The parties will bear their own costs of the appeal.