State Of West Bengal & Ors vs M/S. S.K. Maji on 5 March, 2025
37. Though the underlying philosophy in arbitration law in this
country has undergone a sea-change from what it was under the Arbitration
Act, 1940 to what it is now under the 1996 Act and several Supreme Court
judgments caution against interpreting the provisions of the 1996 Act by
referring to the 1940 Act, the fundamental basis in dealing with a challenge to
an arbitral award remains unaltered. In the most traditional approach, the
court would not step in to correct every perceived wrong complained of by a
challenger simply on the ground that since the challenger was a party to an
agreement that took the assessment away from the sovereign forum to a
private forum, the challenger had to live with the decision of the forum of its
choice. The same proposition, put in a different form, is simply this: when
there is a proper submission, whether of fact or of law, to arbitration, it is not
for the court to sit as an ordinary court of appeal over an arbitral award
because the arbitrator has taken a view of law or of fact which a court of law
may not have taken if such court were trying the dispute. The everlasting
principle, unaffected by the paradigm shift in the arbitration law in this
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country, is that except to the extent expressly or by necessary implication
permitted by the governing statute, the court will not revise, remit or set aside
an arbitral award. [See State of West Bengal v Pam Developments Private
Limited25].