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In the above all cases, the learned District Judge, presiding over the https://www.mhc.tn.gov.in/judis Arbitration Tribunal under NHAI Act “without remitting the matter to the arbitrator” determined the compensation and passed the impugned order. Therefore according to the counsel, there is error in the impugned order. Therefore, on the basis of the technical plea, the counsel appearing for the NHAI, seek to set aside the award passed by the Learned Principal District Judge by invoking the powers under section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act.

11.1.The NHAI Act itself prescribes procedure and the guidelines to follow in the process of the determination of the compensation. Therefore, only at the stage of Section 34 of the Arbitration Act, the land loser gets the first opportunity to avail judicial application of mind in determining the compensation. Therefore, the technical plea of the NHAI that the power under Section 34 of the Act is very much limited and Tribunal has to remand the matter without determining the compensation even after finding that the arbitrator had acted against the public policy and his decision suffers from perversity and apparent illegality on the face of the award itself https://www.mhc.tn.gov.in/judis on account of the lack of judicial application of mind in determining the compensation, could not be accepted in this case, for the reason that the same would not only amount to miscarriage of justice and would place the land loser in the worst position to restart the litigation. Therefore, this Court placed the reliance of the following paragraph of the Hon'ble Supreme Court, in the case of ONGC Ltd. v. Saw Pipes Ltd., reported in (2003) 5 SCC 705 at page 719:

12.6. In spite of that, the authorities has been raising the technical plea. It is seen from the past experience, that the Government always raised number of technicalities in order to deprive the livelihood of the persons like the respondents on every occasion so as to prolong the payment of the legitimate compensation. The question of technicalities always arise in the case of adjudication between the downtrodden and the Government authorities ie., in the case of inequality. Whenever, the fight is between two groups of inequality, suppressed people become the victim of technicality. One of the said circumstance, raised by the NHAI in this case is relating to the procedural technicality which would cause serious prejudice to the land losers who have been longing for fair determination of compensation for https://www.mhc.tn.gov.in/judis their acquired land.

(1) 2024 (2) SCC 375 ; (2) 2018 (11) SCC 328 ; (3) 2022 (3) SCC 237 Therefore, this Court finds no grounds to interfere in the said award under Section 37 of the Arbitration Act, 1996.

14.7. In addition to the above reasons, number of appeals filed by NHAI against the same notification were dismissed either at the stage of condoning delay or after numbering of the main case. In all the dismissal cases, they took a similar plea and the same was not accepted by this Court. Therefore, in this case, the said dismissal is binding on this Court in the present proceedings. It is settled principle, if in a group of cases arising out https://www.mhc.tn.gov.in/judis of the same acquisition, the technical plea was declined in one group of cases, the same would operate as resjudicata in the remaining cases. In C.M.A.(MD).Nos.104 of 2019 etc batch, the Project Director, National Highways 7 K.K.Nagar, Madurai Vs. R.Karuppaiah, the Hon'ble Division Bench of this Court also accepted the said point. Therefore, this Court finds no reason to differ with the reasoning of the said ratio on factual and legal aspects for the reason that the same arose out of the same acquisition and the same issue. Therefore, on a over all assessment of the above facts, it is clear that the learned tribunal Judge correctly took into consideration of the various documents including earlier award passed relating to the same acquisition and correctly fixed the market value.