Garuda Aviation Services Pvt Ltd v. Airport Director of Pune Airport

arbitrator. Garuda Aviation came to this Court in an application under Section 11 (6) of the Arbitration Act. By an order of 10th December 2014, this Court appointed a Senior Counsel as the sole Arbitrator.

8. Very many things were argued in Arbitration. A few of them were re-agitated in the Section 34 Petition. Before us, there is a smaller subset of arguments was based on paragraph 17 of the Award at pages 311 to 312. It would probably be best to reproduce the paragraph. The Claimant in arbitration was Garuda Aviation. AAI was the Respondent.

17. The next question that arises is whether after the shifting of the Premises, the Claimant was compensated with the same amount of the area as was originally allotted to it under the terms of the License, viz., 11,000 sq. metres. It is the Respondents’ case that in view of the fact that the Claimant was disputing that the area to which they had been shifted was equal to the area originally allotted to them, the Airport Director constituted a committee of four officers of the Respondent to undertake a measurement of the area to which the Claimant was shifted. All these four officers have signed the measurement sheet which was produced before me. From their designations all these four persons appear to be fairly senior. They were the Manager Engineering, the Manager Finance, AGM–TM and the Manager, Commercial. It is the Respondents’ case that an officer of the Claimant was present when this measurement 8th July 2022 18-COMAP-581-2019 IN CARBP-570-2017+.DOC was taken and that the Claimants were informed by a letter dated 17th–21st November 2011 of the fact that the area to which the Claimant had been shifted was equal to the area originally allotted to the Claimant. This letter, according to the Respondents, has never been disputed by the Claimant. In the circumstances, I have no reason to disbelieve the veracity of the measurement sheet, and on the basis of the measurement sheet to come to the conclusion that on the Premises being shifted, the Claimant was adequately compensated with an equivalent area.

9. The submission before us is that the measurement sheet in question “was not proved” or, at any rate, cannot be said to have been proved as required by law.

10. In the state of the law as it currently stands this submission puts the Appellant out of Court immediately. Not only is the Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co Ltd v National Highways Authority of India1 line of authority abundantly clear that there can be no re-appreciation of evidence in Section 34 and that the Arbitrator is the sole and best judge of evidence as also the master of the evidentiary records, but subsequent decisions also clarify that a re-appreciation of evidence is not an aspect or facet of “patent illegality”. Paragraph 29 of the Supreme Court decision in Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd v Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd2 says:

29. Patent illegality should be illegality which goes to the root of the matter. In other words, every error of law committed by the Arbitral Tribunal would not fall