CONTENTS - Central Public Works Department

224 SECTION 35
(4) The Executive Engineer should make payment to the contractor in terms of the award within a
period of 30 days from the receipt of acceptance of award from the competent authority, and
intimate the actual date of payment of award to the contractor.
(5) The payments made towards arbitration awards shall be charged to the work.
(6) In all arbitration cases where awards of the Arbitrator go against the Department (whether by
upholding the claims of the contractors or by rejecting the counter claims of the Department),
detailed reasons and lapses, if any, on the part of concerned officials due to which the awards
have gone against the Department, should be gone into in detail by the Chief Engineer concerned.
The Chief Engineer should send his recommendations to the Director General (Works) on the
issue of fixing of responsibility and for taking action against the officers, wherever necessary.
(7) The Chief Engineers will keep statistics of all such cases for the information of Government
whenever required.
(8) The arbitration award means the total award including the interest awarded by the Arbitrator. The
amount of such interest is to be worked out upto the date specified in the award. Therefore, the
amount of the interest has to be taken into consideration while deciding the authority competent to
accept the award. However, in case no fixed date is specified in the award and the interest is to be
paid upto the date of actual payment of award amount to the contractor, the likely date of such
payment may be taken into consideration. There may be a situation that after acceptance of the
award by the competent authority, the actual payment to the contractor gets delayed beyond the
anticipated date due to some unavoidable circumstances, and the amount of interest increases to
an extent that the total amount of award exceeds the power of acceptance of the authority that
accepted the award. In such cases, the payment may be made to the contractor as early as
possible, and the case may be submitted to the authority competent to accept the increased
amount of award for ex-post facto approval.
35.16 Setting aside of the award
(1) The question of challenging the arbitral award in a Court of law should be considered very carefully.
Under section 34 of Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, there are very few grounds available to
challenge the arbitral award as follows:
(a) The party making the application furnishes proof that:
(i) a party was under some incapacity, or
(ii) the arbitration agreement is not valid under the law to which the parties have subjected it
or, failing any indication thereon, under the law for the time being in force, or
(iii) the party making the application was not given proper notice of the appointment of an
Arbitrator or of the arbitral proceedings or was otherwise unable to present his case, or
(iv) the arbitratal award deals with a dispute not contemplated by or not falling within the terms
of submission to arbitration, or it contains decision on matters beyond the scope of
submission to arbitration, provided that, if the decision on matters submitted to arbitration
can be separated from those not submitted, only the part of the arbitral award which contains
decisions on matters not submitted to arbitration may be set aside, or
(v) the composition of the arbitral tribunal or arbitral procedure was not in accordance with the
agreement of the parties, unless such agreement was in conflict with a provision of this
Part from which the parties cannot derogate, or failing such agreement, was not in
accordance with this Part, or
(b) The Court finds that:
(i) the subject matter of the dispute is not capable of settlement by the arbitrator under the law
for the time being in force, or
(ii) the arbitrate award is in conflict with the public policy of India.
(2) An application for setting aside an arbitration award may not be made after 3 months have elapsed
from the date on which the party making that application had received that arbitral award or from