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8. Pursuant to the aforesaid order, Shri Mahendra Raj conveyed his consent to act as an arbitrator vide letter dated January 13, 2005. On February 17, 2005, Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass too gave his consent to act as an arbitrator.

9. Consequently, vide order dated November 9, 2006, the following order was passed recording the consent of Shri Mahendra Raj and Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass to act as arbitrators and appointing Shri Parag P. Tripathi, Sr. Advocate as the third arbitrator so as to make the quorum complete in view of the death of Shri A.P. Kanvinde:-

"Vide order dated 14th December, 2004, this court gave an option to the learned Arbitrators to exercise their option if they wanted to continue as Arbitrators. Sh. Mohinder Raj [sic Mahendra Raj], Arbitrator, as is seen had expressed his willingness to act as an Arbitrator provided all the parties to the petition wanted him to act as such. As regards another learned Arbitrator, Sh. Vijay Shankar [sic Mr. Vijay S.T. Shankardass], he was to send his communication to the parties which he seems to have given consent by writing a letter to the respondents. Earlier panel of three Arbitrators was constituted by the parties themselves including the two referred to above. However, unfortunately one of the Arbitrators passed away and, therefore, it has become essential to appoint third Arbitrator, so as to make the quorum complete. Accordingly, Mr. Prag P. Tripathi [sic Parag P. Tripathi], Sr. Adv. of this court is hereby appointed as third Arbitrator............"

13. Soon thereafter, on 16th March, 2007, Shri Parag P. Tripathi, Sr. Advocate sent a letter of the same date to Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass and Shri Mahendra Raj to fix a date for the arbitration. No response was received by Shri Parag P. Tripathi to the aforesaid letter from Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass. Since the arbitration proceedings were not taking off, the petitioners filed IA No.4362/2007 and AA No.174/2003 praying for the substitution of Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass for another arbitrator, which however, was dismissed as withdrawn with liberty "to file a proper independent petition after completing necessary formalities in accordance with law" vide order dated 20th April, 2007. On the same day, that is, on 20th April, 2007, the respondent No.1 wrote to the panel of arbitrators and to the parties wherein the respondent No.1 concurred with the alleged "conclusions" of Shri Vijay S.T. Shankardass and stated that he did not see any useful purpose in pursuing the matter.

18. On 28th August, 2008, Mr. Parag P. Tripathi, Sr. Advocate wrote a letter to the petitioners stating:-

"5. In view of the long time which has elapsed without any proceedings and my present commitments, I regret to say that it would not be possible for me to continue as an arbitrator.
6. I, therefore, request you to kindly communicate this to the Hon'ble Court so that another arbitrator may be appointed in my place."