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5. As per the Respondent, the Arbitrator had entered reference in June, 2021. However, there is no written order passed by the ld. Arbitrator.

6. The contention of the Petitioner is that the Respondent - Sh. Jagjit Singh unfortunately passed away on 20th July, 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thereafter, on 3rd March, 2022, unfortunately, the ld. Sole Arbitrator appointed by the Court also passed away.

10. The prayer in these petitions is broadly two fold:

i) That the earlier Arbitrator having passed away, the mandate ought to be terminated and a fresh Arbitrator ought to be appointed;

ii) An interim prayer seeking an injunction against creation of any third-party interest in the property.

11. Ld. Counsel for the Petitioner submits that the Petitioner has made repeated attempts to get a fresh Arbitrator appointed; however, to no avail. Ld. Counsel for the Respondent has two submissions - first, that the arbitration proceedings itself abated in view of the fact that the earlier ld. Arbitrator had entered reference in June, 2021 and the Respondent had passed away on 20th July, 2021, yet no steps were taken till July, 2022. His second submission is that the abatement is a matter of right and therefore the petitions are technically flawed.

15. In the present case, the Respondent had passed away on 20th July 2021 and the arbitrator passed away on 3rd March, 2022. For the present purposes and in view of the events that have transpired, even if some informal communication had taken place between the parties and the Arbitrator, the same cannot be treated as formal reference having been entered into, as there is no written order which has been passed. In any event, ld. Counsel for the Respondent submits that the order was to be communicated in writing but the ld. Arbitrator himself passed away in March, 2022.

16. Under such circumstances, it is not possible for this Court to accept that the ld. Arbitrator had entered reference. Be that as it may, in terms of the order passed by the Supreme Court in, the period till 30th May, 2022 would not be counted for the purpose of calculating limitation.

17. In the present case, the Court is also adjudicating an application under Section 11 of the Act. The Supreme Court in its decision Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Anr v. Nortel Networks India Pvt Ltd, (2021) 5 SCC 738 decided the question of what the limitation period for filing an application for appointment of an arbitrator would be. In answering this question, the Supreme Court noted that the Act does not explicitly specify a limitation period for filing an application for the appointment of an Arbitrator. In the absence of such a specific timeframe within the Act, the Supreme Court held that the appropriate course of action is to apply the residual provision found in Article 137 of the schedule of the Limitation Act, 1963. According to this provision, a general limitation period of three years is prescribed for legal actions where no specific duration is mentioned. Therefore, based on this interpretation, the Supreme Court concluded that applications for appointing an Arbitrator must be filed within a three-year period, starting from the date when the right to apply accrues. The relevant extract of the said decision is extracted as under: