In this case, the Hon’ble Delhi High Court addresses whether a petition under Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, seeking extension of the mandate of an arbitral tribunal, can be entertained after the arbitral award has already been delivered. The petitioner relied on earlier Delhi High Court decisions, particularly Chandok Machineries v. S.N. Sunderson & Co., to argue that the court could extend the tribunal’s mandate even after the award had been made. However, the respondent argued, and the court agreed, that later judgments, especially the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rohan Builders (India) (P) Ltd. v. Berger Paints India Ltd., and subsequent Delhi High Court Judgements like National Skill Development Corpn. v. Best First Step Education (P) Ltd., 2024, has clarified that such an application is maintainable only if the arbitral proceedings are pending, i.e, before the award is passed.

The court held that once an award is pronounced, the arbitral tribunal becomes functus officio, and there is no scope for retrospective validation of the tribunal’s mandate. The judgment distinguishes earlier views and emphasizes that Section 29A’s mechanism is intended to ensure the timely completion of arbitral proceedings, preventing parties from seeking an extension after seeing the outcome of an award. In this specific case, as the petitioner waited until after the award was delivered (and even after a Section 34 challenge was filed), the petition was found to be belated and impermissible. Thus, the court dismissed the petition for extension of the arbitral tribunal’s mandate after the pronouncement of the award.

Oyo Apartments Investments LLP was represented by Advocate Dr. Amit George and DMD Advocates led by Chaitanya Kaushik, Avinash K Singh, Saurabh Pal, Seema Mehta, Vidhi Uppal, and Dushyant Kaul.