The Supreme Court has held that whether a particular claim in a works contract is covered by, or falls outside, an 'excepted matters' clause is a question squarely within the competence of the arbitral tribunal under Section 16 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, not one for a court exercising appointment-stage jurisdiction under Section 11.
The Court also held that a writ appellate court cannot pre-determine arbitral jurisdiction or restrict a tribunal's Section 16 inquiry, including into the validity of a contract's termination, reinforcing that jurisdictional questions of this kind belong with the tribunal in the first instance, with only limited, deferential court review available thereafter.
The ruling continues a consistent line of recent Supreme Court authority narrowing the scope of judicial intervention at the referral and appointment stage of arbitration, pushing threshold jurisdictional disputes, including the scope of exclusionary clauses in government works contracts, squarely into the tribunal's own hands.