SARJOO PROSAD, J. - (1.) THIS appeal is directed against the decision of Bapna J. dated 13th March, 1959, sitting single. It arises out of a proceeding for arbitration.
(2.) THE appellant Shyam Sunder and the respondents Sitaram, Ganga Bishan, and Bal-Krishna were parties to an agreement dated 3rd November, 1948, for reference of the matter in dispute between them to the arbitration of one Mr. H. P. Bagehi, an advocate of Agra. THE arbitrator gave bis award on 18th June, 1952. Bal Krishna, one of the parties to the agreement, then applied to the District Judge of Merta on 17th September, 1952, for an order on the arbitrator to file his award, together with any depositions and documents which may have been presented and proved before him and to take further proceedings according to law in order to pass a decree on the basis of the award. THE court passed an order on the arbitrator to file his award and in pursuance of that order, the award was filed by the advocate for the arbitrator on the 27th of March, 1953. On receipt of the award the court ordered that the parties to the reference may be informed of the fact of the award having been filed, asking them to present their objections, if any. THE notice so directed to be issued by the court was served on the appellant Shyam Sunder on the 3rd of June, 1953 and he filed his objections on the 18th of July, 1953. Respondent Balkrihsna pleaded that the objections filed by the appellant were time-barred under Article 158 of the Limitation Act and as such should be rejected. THE plea was upheld by the learned District Judge, who rejected the objections on the ground of limitation and proceeded to pass a decree in accordance with the award on 14th of March, 1955. An appeal was then presented under sec. 30 of the Arbitration Act against the order of the District Judge, refusing to set aside the award and rejecting his objections on the point of limitation. THE learned Judge in his judgment under appeal affirmed the decision of the learned District Judge and dismissed the same with costs. THE appellant has, therefore, preferred this appeal against that decision under sec. 18 of the Rajasthan High Court Ordinance. The only point which arises for consideration in this appeal is about the question of limitation namely, whether the objections filed by the appellant were time-barred. It is contended on behalf of the appellant that since the depositions and documents taken and proved before the arbitrator had not been filed along with the award, the court had no jurisdiction to issue any notice to the parties calling upon them to file their objections. The depositions and documents were actually filed on the 26th of September, 1953; and according to the contention of the petitioner,the award should be deemed to have been filed on that date. The notice, therefore, which was issued on the 27th of March, 53, was no notice according to law and the period of limitation provided under Article 158 of the Limitation Act could not run against the appellant until a notice was issued after the date when all the relevant papers were duly filed. The contention of the petitioner is that the objection presented by him on the 18th of July, 1953, were, therefore, very much within time and had been erroneously rejected by the learned District Judge without due consideration of the same. The respondents refuted the above contentions and alleged that the period of 30 days for filing objections from the date of service of notice of filing of the award applied to the circumstances of the case. The award must be held to have been filed on the 28th March 1953. when it was actually presented in court; and the omission to file the documents and the other relevant papers did not in any manner affect the filing of the award itself. The notice, therefore, which was issued to Shyam Sunder on the 28th of March, 1953, to present his objections, if any, to the filing of the award, was a valid notice in the eye of law as required by S. 14 (2) of the Arbitration Act. The notice having been served on the appellant Shyam Sunder on the 3rd of June, 1953, it was incumbent on the latter to present his objections within 30 days of the date of service of that notice. The objections having been actually presented on the 18th of July, 1953, were, therefore, clearly very much beyond time and were rightly rejected by the learned District Judge. The respective contentions, therefore, depend upon the language of sec. 14 (2) of the Arbitration Act and Art. 158 of the Limitation Act. The relevant part of sec. 14 of the Arbitration Act is as follows: - (2) The arbitrators or umpire shall, at the request of any party to the arbitration agreement or any person claiming under such party or if so directed by the Court, and upon payment of the fees and charges due in respect of the arbitration and award and of the costs and charges of filing the award,cause the award or a signed copy of it together with any depositions and documents which may have been taken and proved before them to be filed in Court, and the Court shall thereupon give notice to the parties of the filing of the award. The Section clearly requires that the Court should give notice to the parties of the filing of the award. The filing of the award is something quite different from the filing of the depositions and documents which may have been taken and proved before the arbitrators. The section of course does require that these documents should also be filed by the arbitrators in court, but the filing of the award and its validity as such does not appear to be dependent upon the filing of these documents. These documents may be presented simultaneously or even later. If the documents in question are not presented by the arbitrator along with the award, as it should ordinarily be done, the court may enforce the obligation to present those documents even at a later stage"; but the notice to the parties about the filing of the award already presented and inviting objections need not, therefore, await the filing of those documents. Those documents may be needed by the court when disposing of the objections to the award, but we ar|e unable to understand how they affect the filing of the award. We do not think that the learned counsel for the appellant is, therefore, justified in contending that until all the documents have been presented in court, in the eye of law there is no filing of the award at all and the court will have no jurisdiction to issue any notice to the parties about the filing of the award itself until that stage is reached. It is not that the depositions are unknown to the parties so as to create any handicap in raising legitimate objections available to them. The words "the Court shall thereupon give notice to the parties" cannot, therefore,be construed to mean that the notice of filing of the award must be postponed until the filing of the depositions and documents. The notice to the parties is about the filing of the award and not of the filing of the documents and depositions taken and proved before the arbitrators. The word "thereupon" in our opinion, governs only the filing of the award and not the filing of the documents and depositions which are only ancillary papers relating to the award and not as essential as the award itself. The notice Will not specify or mention the details of the depositions and documents; but it will mention that the award has been filed. These documents and depositions may be necessary for the purpose of testing the validity of the objections raised, but we do not see how the absence of those documents can affect the competence of the court to issue notice to the parties about the filing of the award. This view of the law is also supported by the language of Art. 158 of the Limitation Act which requires that an application under the Arbitration Act to set aside an award or to get an award remitted for reconsideration must be presented within thirty days of "the date of service of the notice of filing of the award". Art. 158 does not say of the filing of the award and the documents and depositions that were presented to the arbitrator. If the issue of the notice was also dependent upon the filing of the documents in question, Art. 158 would have specifically said so. it stands to reason that there may be a case in which no documents and deposition may have been taken or there may be no necessity for the court to examine those documents and depositions because there is no objection taken to the award itself by any of the parties concerned. In that case the mere filing of the award would be sufficient. Can it be said in those circumstances that the court must continue to wait for the filing of the documents and depositions before issuing notice to the parties for the purpose of adopting the award in the decree of the court. The time for filing the objections for setting aside the award,therefore. mnst be taken to run from the date; of service of the notice which was given in this case; and clearly the objection filed in the circumstances was barred by limitation. If the notice is held to be a valid notice in law, it is not disputed that the objection was barred. The claim of the appellant that the notice could be given only after 26th Sept. , 1953, and not earlier and that consequently there was no limitation involved cannot be sustained and the judgment of the learned Judge affirming the decision of the court below is, therefore, quite justified. The learned counsel for the appellant has relied in this context upon a Single Judge decision in Khatiza Beebee Vs. I. E. Abowath (1 ). The case arose on the original side of the High Court. It appears that the arbitrators as provided under sec. 11 (2) of the old Arbitration Act had not given notice to the parties about the making of the award. This was held to be fatal. There are of course some observations in that case that the Registrarof the Court could not issue a notice to the parties about the filing of the award until the award was accompanied by the copies of the notices issued by the arbitrators to the parties concerned about the making of the award;but even so the learned Judge held that the objections were undoubtedly timebarred, though there was no proper filing of the award. We do not know,nor is it necessary for us to know what the Rules of the Rangoon High Court on the Original Side were,which governed the case but the decision is hardly of any assistance on the point under investigation in the present case. There the award was not accompanied by any notice issued by the arbitrators about the making thereof in violation of sec. 11 (2) of the Indian Arbitration Act as it stood earlier. Such a notice may have been essential to the making of the award itself and to the filing thereof:. Here in this case there is no dispute about any such lack of notice by the arbitrators. Another decision cited by the learned counsel is Ramsaran Das Vs. Adhar Chandra Das (2 ). The decision, if at all relevant runs counter to the submission of the learned counsel. If the omission to file these documents as contemplated by sec. 14 (2) of the Arbitration Act does not affect the validity of the award itself, it follows that the omission to file them simultaneously with the award would not affect the validity of the award either. The filing of the award would be valid and complete even without these documents. We have, therefore, no hesitation in holding that the appeal has been rightly decided by the learned Judge. . ;