NORTH EASTERN ELECTRIC POWER CORPORATION LIMITED Vs. PATEL ENGINEERING LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The challenge here is to five arbitral awards ' three of them made on August 21, 2016 and the other two on October 14, 2016 ' pertaining to three lots of work in respect of the Turial Hydro Electric Power Project on the Turial river system in the Aizawl district of Mizoram and two connected road construction contracts. The ultimate work involved the setting-up of a power station with two 30 MW hydro-turbines.

(2.) The appeals are directed against a common judgment and order of September 12, 2022 as corrected by a further order of October 26, 2022. The parties agree that since the disputes pertaining to the several lots of work and the two connected road construction projects were dealt with together by taking up the five references analogously, the appeals arising out of the distinct awards may be dealt with by a common order.

(3.) Two fundamental grounds of challenge are fashioned by the North-Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited which had engaged respondent Patel Engineering Limited for setting up the power project. According to the appellant, two sets of references arose pertaining to different periods of time and covering the same project. The order for references passed by the Gauhati High Court, for all intents and purposes, required both sets of references pertaining to different periods of time to be taken up and adjudicated simultaneously. The appellant asserts that since the second set of references can no longer be taken up by the arbitral tribunal which rendered the awards impugned herein, these awards must go and the entirety of the matter referred to the tribunal considering the references pertaining to a later period as such references are at an advanced stage of hearing. The second fundamental objection taken to the awards is that the arbitral tribunal was biased as it had obtained hospitality from the respondent and had put up at the respondent's guesthouse in New Delhi. On such count, the appellant maintains that before the second set of references got underway in right earnest, it came to the knowledge of the appellant that the arbitrators had accepted the hospitality of the respondent herein and, possibly, shared meals with officers of the respondent, whereupon the appellant applied for the mandate of the arbitral tribunal to be terminated. Following such application by the appellant, the arbitral tribunal voluntarily declined to take up the second set of references.