Fetching a certified copy yourself starts the Section 34 clock, even if the tribunal never served the award

Justice Vinay Saraf upheld the dismissal, as time-barred, of a challenge by an Indore cloth trader to a Rs 2.27 lakh ex parte award, holding that once she obtained a certified copy from the arbitration board, the three-month limitation ran from that day despite the admitted failure to deliver a signed copy under Section 31(5).

An arbitration board at Indore’s cloth market passed an ex parte award against a trader in December 2018 and, on the record, never delivered a signed copy to her. She obtained a certified copy herself three months later, then waited another six months before challenging the award. The Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Indore bench has held that her challenge was rightly thrown out as time-barred: the day she took the certified copy was the day the Section 34 clock started, and the tribunal’s failure to serve the award under Section 31(5) does not hand a party unlimited time.

A cloth market award nobody says was served

M/s Sulabh Syntex filed a claim on 24 May 2018 before the Arbitration Board of the Shrimant Maharaja Tukoji Rao Cloth Market Merchants Association, Indore, seeking Rs 2,28,210 from Anjana, wife of Kailashchandra Maheshwari, on the footing that she is the proprietor of M/s Maheshwari Vastra Bhandar, which had bought material from Sulabh Syntex and not paid for it. After notice to her, the Board allowed the claim on 11 December 2018 and awarded Rs 2,27,710 with interest and Rs 9,340 as arbitration costs.

Anjana’s case was that the Board never forwarded a signed copy of the award to her. She says she learnt of it only when a notice reached her from the Additional District Judge, Ashta, District Sehore, in a separate execution case. She then applied to the Board’s secretariat and obtained a certified copy on 18 March 2019. She filed an application under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 before the District Judge, Indore to set the award aside. The judgment records the filing date at one place as 16 September 2019 and at another as 7 September 2019; on either date it came more than 180 days after she had the certified copy.

Sulabh Syntex applied to have the Section 34 application dismissed as barred by limitation. The 11th District Judge, Indore allowed that application in MJC AV No. 295/2019 by an order dated 14 October 2023. The District Judge found that there was no evidence on record that a signed copy of the award had ever been dispatched to Anjana, but held that since she had herself obtained a certified copy on 18 March 2019, limitation began that day. She had neither filed within the 90 days prescribed by Section 34(3) nor within the further 30 days the proviso allows, and no delay beyond that can be condoned. Anjana appealed to the High Court in Arbitration Appeal No. 303 of 2023.

The appeal: no signed copy, no clock

Akash Rathi, for Anjana, framed the appeal around the interplay between Section 31(5) and Section 34(3). Section 31(5) requires that after an award is made, a signed copy be delivered to each party. Section 34(3) says an application to set aside may not be made after three months from the date on which the applicant received the award. His argument was that the two must be read together: since it was admitted that no signed copy was ever dispatched, the award had never been received in the manner the statute prescribes, so limitation had never started, and the District Judge was wrong to count it from the certified copy.

He relied on Union of India v. Tecco Trichy Engineers and Contractors (2005) 4 SCC 239, where the Supreme Court held that delivery of the award under Section 31(5) is a matter of substance, not formality, and that delivery by the tribunal and receipt by the party set in motion the limitation periods under Sections 33 and 34. He also cited State of Maharashtra v. ARK Builders Pvt Ltd (2011) 4 SCC 616, which held that the Section 34(3) period runs only from the date a signed copy is delivered to or received by the party seeking to set the award aside. Where the law prescribes that an order or award be communicated in a particular way and also sets a limitation period for challenging it, he argued, limitation can only begin when the award is received in the prescribed manner. He asked for the District Judge’s order to be set aside.

The trader had the award in her hands by March 2019

Pranay Joshi, for Sulabh Syntex, said the Board had duly intimated Anjana of the proceedings, proceeded ex parte only after she deliberately stayed away despite repeated opportunities, and had in fact dispatched signed copies of the award to both parties by registered post. The Board’s outward register, he said, records the dispatch at entry No. 1318 for the respondent and entry No. 1319 for Anjana; only the postal receipt relating to her had been misplaced from the tribunal’s record. She could not take advantage of a misplaced receipt, and receipt should be presumed.

In any event, he argued, she obtained the certified copy on 18 March 2019, knew the contents of the award from that day, and could have filed her Section 34 application at once. Instead she filed 182 days later. He relied on a single-judge decision of the Bombay High Court in Rahul Omprakash Gandhi v. Akola Janta Commercial Co-operative Bank Ltd 2023 SCC OnLine Bom 814, which held that the whole object of Section 31(5) is to make the party aware of the nature, effect and import of the award so it can decide whether to challenge it. That purpose is achieved whether the party receives a signed copy or obtains a certified copy of the signed award; in either case knowledge of the contents is attributed to the party and time under Sections 33(1) and 34(3) begins to run. The Bombay court called the contrary reading too literal and narrow, one that would defeat the object of the Act.

Mr Joshi also cited two Chhattisgarh High Court decisions, Union of India v. Bhola Prasad Agrawal 2022 SCC OnLine Chh 1644, holding that mere non-delivery of a signed copy causes no prejudice where the party knows the award and can proceed in law, and Lalkumar Patel v. The Chief Engineer, W.P. (227) No. 96 of 2021, decided on 18 March 2026, which followed the Bombay reasoning. He added Anilkumar Jinabhai Patel v. Pravinchandra Jinabhai Patel (2018) 15 SCC 178, where the Supreme Court treated service of the award on one appellant as service on all.

What the statute says, and what the judge made of it

Justice Vinay Saraf heard the appeal for final disposal with the parties’ consent, reserved it on 28 September 2026 and pronounced the order on 23 October. He recorded what was not in dispute: an ex parte award on 11 December 2018, a certified copy obtained by Anjana on 18 March 2019, and a Section 34 application filed in September 2019 that the District Judge dismissed as time-barred.

The judge identified three questions: whether receipt of a certified copy starts limitation for a Section 34 application; where an award has been made and signed but a signed copy never delivered to one party, from what date limitation runs if that party later obtains a certified copy; and whether, in such a situation, the award is enforceable as a decree under Section 36, so that the fate of an execution would depend on delivery of the signed copy.

He began with the general rule. Limitation under Section 34(3) runs from receipt of the signed copy that the tribunal must deliver under Section 31(5). From that receipt the party has three months, and in exceptional cases a further 30 days on sufficient cause, and not a day more. Enforcement under Section 36(1) is itself tied to the expiry of that time. Where a tribunal dispatches the award by registered post and there is no evidence of delivery, the judge observed, Section 27 of the General Clauses Act presumes delivery and limitation is counted from the expiry of one month from posting. He also set out Section 2(1)(h), which defines a party as a party to the arbitration agreement, and Section 3(1), under which a written communication is deemed received if delivered personally or at the addressee’s place of business, habitual residence or mailing address, or, failing those, sent to the last known address by registered letter or any other means that records the attempt.

On that framework the Board’s case of dispatch failed. Even on the District Judge’s findings there was no evidence that a signed copy had been dispatched to Anjana, so under Section 3(1) no copy had been delivered and none could be deemed received. Reading Sections 31(1), 31(5), 33(1), 34(3), 36 and 39 together, the judge held that delivery of a signed copy is a mandatory condition under Section 31(5), and that in this case the signed copy had admittedly not been delivered.

He accepted that the Supreme Court cases pointed the same way. Tecco Trichy and ARK Builders make delivery mandatory; Anilkumar Jinabhai Patel starts limitation from receipt of the signed copy; Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd (2021) 7 SCC 657 treats receipt of the signed copy as the date from which objections run; and in M/s Motilal Agarwala v. State of West Bengal (2025) 8 SCR 2400 the Supreme Court held that handing a signed copy to an Assistant Engineer who attended the proceedings was not enough, and that limitation for the State ran from when it learnt of the award through the execution notice. It is no longer open to argument, the judge said, that limitation does not commence where the tribunal has not served the signed copy.

Why those cases did not decide this one

What made this case peculiar, in the judge’s words, was that Anjana had herself applied for and obtained the certified copy, which was delivered to her on 18 March 2019. The question was whether a party’s own receipt of a certified copy is the starting point. The judgments she relied on were not exactly on that point. The Bombay decision in Rahul Omprakash Gandhi and the Chhattisgarh decision in Bhola Prasad Agrawal dealt with that very situation and held that receipt of a certified copy begins the running of limitation for Section 34 objections.

Justice Saraf agreed. The purpose of delivering a signed copy, he reasoned, is to tell the party that an award has been passed so that, if aggrieved, it can approach the court within limitation. A Section 34 application can be filed with either a signed copy or a certified copy, so a party holding a certified copy faces no difficulty in filing. Once a party has the certified copy and chooses not to challenge the award within the statutory period, it “would have to suffer for the negligent inaction”.

The District Judge, he noted, had not counted limitation from the date of the award but from the date of the certified copy. Anjana could have filed within three months of 18 March 2019, or within a further 30 days on sufficient cause. She filed 183 days after receiving the copy. Section 31(5) cannot be read to mean that if the tribunal fails to deliver a signed copy, the award is never enforceable and no limitation ever starts despite receipt of a certified copy, so that “the party in default will enjoy the unlimited limitation”. That reading, the judge held, would defeat the interest of justice. Limitation for the objection began when the certified copy was obtained, and the application was outside it.

Order

The appeal was dismissed. The order of the 11th District Judge, Indore dated 14 October 2023 in MJC AV No. 295/2019, dismissing Anjana’s Section 34 application as barred by limitation, was affirmed as just and proper. There was no order as to costs. The trial court’s record is to be returned along with a copy of the High Court’s order. The award of 11 December 2018 for Rs 2,27,710 with interest and Rs 9,340 in costs stands.