1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF HIMACHAL PRADESH SHIMLA FAO No.177 of 1996 Date of decision:20.11.2008 H.P. Board of School Education Appellant Versus M/s Kem Publishers Respondents __________________________________________________________ Coram: The Hon’ble Mr.Justice R.B. Misra, Judge. The Hon’ble Mr. Justice Surjit Singh, Judge. Whether approved for reporting?1 For the Appellant: Mr. Rakesh Kanwar, Advocate. For the Respondent: Mr. Raman Sethi, Advocate Per Surjit Singh, J (Oral) This appeal is directed against the order dated 12.4.1996 of learned Single Judge, whereby objections under section 30 of Arbitration Act, 1940, filed by respondent M/s Kem Publishers against the award dated 30.7.1992 of the Arbitrator have been allowed and the matter has been remitted to the Arbitrator for passing fresh award. 2. Facts relevant for the decision of the appeal may be noticed. Respondent M/s Kem Publishers is supplier of text books. There had been an agreement between the respondent and the appellant for supply of text books by the former to the latter. Admittedly, books worth Rs. 77,387.81 were supplied by the respondent to the appellant. Respondent claimed that the aforesaid amount of money on account of price of the books had 1 Whether reporter of local papers are allowed to see the judgment ? 2 not been paid to him, while the appellant alleged that the money stood paid to the respondent through its authorized agent, named Sh. C.L. Sharma, by means of a cheque. Suit was filed in this court. On the asking of respondent, parties were required to file agreement. Agreement provided for referring the dispute arising between the parties to an arbitrator. Consequently dispute was referred to the sole Arbitrator, i.e. Secretary (Education), Govt. of Himachal Pradesh who vide award dated 30.7.1992 dismissed the claim of the respondent. He gave reasons in the award for dismissing the claim. 3. Objections against the award were filed by the respondent. It was alleged that the reasoning given by the Arbitrator was contrary to the material and evidence on record and this amounted to misconduct on the part of Arbitrator. No reply to the objections was filed. Learned Single Judge received the evidence on affidavits and allowed the objections. Award was set aside and the matter remitted to the Arbitrator for making fresh award. 4. We have heard learned counsel for the appellant. His main grievance is that the learned Single Judge has acted like a court of appeal and re-appreciated the evidence adduced before the Arbitrator to come to the conclusion that the arbitrator has mis-conducted himself and, therefore, the award is liable to be set aside. Though from a layman’s angle it may appear that the learned Single Judge has looked into the evidence to come to the aforesaid conclusion, yet in fact what the learned Single Judge 3 has done is that he has made reference to the evidence adduced before the arbitrator to ascertain whether the reasoning given by him is based on the evidence and material on record or contrary to it. The arbitrator has noticed that signature of the Sh. C.L. Sharma on the purported authority letter against which cheque was issued to said C.L. Sharma was forged, as per opinion of the handwriting expert. He did not disbelieve this expert opinion but stated that since the respondent had admitted that the authority letter was on his letterhead and respondent had not taken any action under criminal law against Sh. C.L. Sharma, he could not be awarded any amount of money. This reasoning of the arbitrator, on the face of it, is perverse because civil rights of the parties cannot be defeated or denied only for the reason that the party concerned did not resort to criminal process, if the civil dispute also happens to amount to an offence. 5. In view of above stated position, we see no merit in the present appeal. The same is, therefore, dismissed. However, we clarify that the observations, if any, appearing in the judgment of the learned Single Judge suggesting that the learned Single Judge has given any finding on any particular fact, shall be over looked by the arbitrator while making fresh award. ( R.B. Misra ), J. ( Surjit Singh ), J. 20th November, 2008 (sl)