Legal Reference Library

The Supreme Court, in Kinnari Mullick vs. Ghanshyam Das Damani, has held that Section 34 (4) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, does not empower the court to relegate the parties before the Arbitral Tribunal after having set aside the arbitral award in question. A three judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Dipak Misra held that the limited discretion available to the court under Section 34(4) can be exercised only upon a written application made in that behalf by a party to the arbitration proceedings and the court cannot exercise this limited power of deferring the proceedings before it suo motu. In the instant case, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court, while setting aside the award in question, also directed, without there being any application of either parties, to send back the award to the Arbitral Tribunal for assigning reasons in support of the award. The apex court bench observed that the respondent did not make such a request before the sing...

The Supreme Court in Ashok Kumar vs. State of Bihar, has reiterated that the candidates who failed to raise any objection to a selection process were estopped from turning around and challenging the selection once they were declared unsuccessful. Selections made for promotion from Class IV posts to Class III posts in the district court of Muzaffarpur were quashed by a single bench of the Patna High Court on a writ petition by several unsuccessful candidates. The contention of the unsuccessful candidates was that the appointment process was vitiated, since under the relevant rules, the written test was required to carry 85 marks and the interview, 15 marks. The division bench set aside the single bench order and the candidates approached the Supreme Court. A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice Dr DY Chandrachud, referring to various case laws regarding the subject, observed that the division bench cannot held to be in error i...

The Patna High Court in Rajesh Kumar vs. Pushpa Rani, considered the sustainability of a decree for judicial separation. The Bench comprising Chief Justice Iqbal Ahmed Ansari and Justice Nilu Agrawal dealt with the effect on a person, who having received a decree of judicial separation and later a divorce decree, proceeds to remarry and father children. In this case, the petitioner husband had filed for a decree of dissolution of marriage under section 13(1)(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which was granted to him in an ex parte proceeding against the wife who failed to attend the proceedings despite having transferred the case from Patna to Allahabad, after a year had elapsed since the decree for separation. Once the decree was granted and the limitation period for filing an appeal against the dissolution granted had expired, the petitioner remarried and fathered two children from the second marriage. The first wife (respondent herein), however, filed an application to review ...

An alleged encroacher of public property cannot challenge an internal communication between two government officials on the issue just because a copy of it had been marked to him too, the Madras High Court Bench here has held. Justices S. Manikumar and C.T. Selvam passed the order while dismissing a writ petition filed by a private school at Guntur village in Tiruverumbur Taluk of Tiruchi district challenging a letter written by a Tahsildar directing a Block Development Officer to act against encroachments. Stating that the school could approach the court only when the revenue officials initiate action against it under the relevant enactments, the judges said that a communication sent by one official to another could not be challenged by way of a writ petition. BEFORE THE MADURAI BENCH OF MADRAS HIGH COURT               DATED:  24.03.2016 CORAM   THE HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE S.MANIKUMAR           and THE HON'...