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.