The Supreme Court has held that an application under Section 29A(5) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, seeking an extension of an arbitral tribunal's mandate, remains maintainable even where the tribunal has, before the application is decided, already delivered its award after the statutory time limit for completing the arbitration had expired.
Section 29A requires an arbitral award in most arbitrations to be made within twelve months of the tribunal entering reference, extendable by consent of parties by a further six months, with any extension beyond that requiring an application to court. The question before the Court was whether a party's application for a court-ordered extension becomes incompetent, or the court's jurisdiction is automatically extinguished, once the tribunal has, by its own initiative or oversight, rendered an award after the statutory period had already run out.
The Supreme Court held that the text of Section 29A does not create a jurisdictional bar of this kind. The mere fact that an arbitrator has delivered an award after the mandate had technically expired does not, by itself, strip the court of its power under Section 29A(4) and (5) to extend the mandate, including retrospectively, where the facts otherwise justify it. The Court reasoned that reading the provision to automatically foreclose an extension application merely because the tribunal acted before the court could rule would allow a procedural irregularity on the arbitrator's part to defeat an otherwise legitimate award, a result the statutory scheme was not intended to produce.
The Court was at pains to clarify that this does not mean an extension will be granted as a matter of course; an extension under Section 29A(4) remains discretionary and must still be supported by sufficient cause. What the ruling settles is the narrower, but practically significant, jurisdictional question of whether the court can even consider the application once an award already exists on the record.