Calcutta High Court M/S. Garden Reach Shipbuilders And ... vs Malay Enterprise on 18 January, 2024 OD6 & 7 ORDER SHEET Ordinary Original Civil Jurisdiction ORIGINAL SIDE AP/865/2023 M/S. GARDEN REACH SHIPBUILDERS AND ENGINEERS LIMITED VS MALAY ENTERPRISE & AP/851/2023 GARDEN REACH SHIP BUILDERS AND ENGINEERS LIMITED VS MALAY ENTERPRISE BEFORE: The Hon'ble JUSTICE MOUSHUMI BHATTACHARYA Date : January 18, 2024. Appearance: Mr. Ranjay De, Adv. Mr. B. K. Sen, Adv. Mr. B. Banerjee, Adv. Mr. A.A. Bose, Adv. ...for the petitioner Mr. Saptarshi Basu, Adv. Mr. Sanjib Seth, Adv. ...for the respondent The Court: The quantum of the awarded amount is not clear from the submissions made on behalf of the awarddebtor. Learned counsel appearing for the awardholder (supplier) has made a calculation of the awarded amount which comes to Rs.19,55,215/. Counsel appearing for the awarddebtor tries to canvass that the award debtor is not liable to pay any sum of money to the supplier. Counsel raises 2 several points which may be good points for the Section 34 application but certainly not under the mandate of Section 19 of the MSMED Act, 2006. Section 19 contains a mandate, in unequivocal terms, that an appellant, who seeks to challenge a decree/ award passed by the MSMED Council (unless the appellant is not the supplier) is required to make a deposit of 75% on the awarded amount. Section 19 also mandates that the deposit shall be made along with the application challenging the award/decree passed by the Facilitation Council. The words of Section 19 make it clear, beyond doubt, that the amount shall be deposited along with the application of challenge/ setting aside, as the case may be. There is in fact a statutory bar on the Court from entertaining a challenge without the 75% deposit. Section 19 does not admit of any arguments with regard to the correctness or legality of the Award or any reason for which the predeposit may be waived. There are several decisions of the Supreme Court which have reinforced the mandate of Section 19 but given time to the awarddebtor to deposit the amount only on consideration of the awarddebtor being in financially involved circumstances. The Court is not willing to engage with the awarddebtor on the nitty gritties of the calculation or least of all, that there is no direction on the award debtor to pay certain sums of money to the awardholder. The relevant part of the impugned award, in fact, indicates precisely the opposite. The concluding part of the Award divides the directions into a month 3 wise statement of liability on the part of the awarddebtor. An amount of Rs.65,692/ has been arrived at as the total principal amount outstanding for the month of January, 2020. The awarddebtor was held to be liable to pay interest on this amount at three times of the bank rate of RBI compounded with monthly rests to the supplier/ awardholder under Section 16 of the MSMED Act. The interest was also to be calculated after 45 days from the submission of the bill dated 3rd November, 2020 till the realisation thereof. The second part of the Award directs the awarddebtor to pay a total principal amount outstanding from the awarddebtor to the awardholder of Rs.1,65,692/ for the month of February, 2020 and the awarddebtor was made liable to a similar rate of interest under Section 16 of the MSMED Act. The third part of the Award relates to the liability of the awarddebtor to pay the total principal amount outstanding for MarchDecember, 2020 except April and May, 2020. The buyer unit (awarddebtor) was given leave to deduct the legitimate amounts towards the statutory clearances as per the terms of the purchase order before making payment to the supplier unit. Even if the Court gives the benefit of the