Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
A party who takes its chance before the tribunal and complains only when it loses gets nowhere. This is the authority for acquiescence and estoppel in arbitration, and it is the answer to a very common line of attack on an award.
Facts
A party consented to arbitration under the arbitration clause and participated in the arbitral proceedings. It later took the plea that there was no arbitration clause at all.
Held
In view of the principles of acquiescence and estoppel, it is not permissible for a party to challenge the arbitration clause after participating in the arbitral proceedings. The plea that there was no arbitration clause was not open to it.
Reasoning
Step one — objections have a time and a place. The Act requires jurisdictional objections to be raised before the tribunal, and s. 4 deems a party who proceeds without stating a known objection without undue delay to have waived the right to object.
Step two — a party cannot approbate and reprobate. Consent, appearance and participation are conduct. A party who has invited the tribunal to decide cannot, after an adverse award, deny that it was ever entitled to decide.
Step three — the limit of the doctrine. Acquiescence operates only where the party had a real choice. That is the point of the contrast below.
Exam use
It opens: Can a party who has participated in the arbitration challenge the award for want of jurisdiction?
Always pair it with Union of India v. G.S. Atwal, the express limit: where the arbitrator unilaterally enlarged the reference and continued to adjudicate on the enlarged dispute despite objections, the parties were left with no option but to participate, and that participation was not acquiescence. The award was liable to be set aside because the arbitrator had misdirected himself.
The examinable distinction is therefore: participation without objection waives; participation under protest, after objection recorded, does not.
Use it with Narayan Prasad Lohia, which applies the same s. 4 waiver to the composition of an even-numbered tribunal.
It does not decide that participation cures non-arbitrability; where the subject matter cannot be referred at all, as in Haryana Telecom and Chiranjilal Shrilal Goenka, no amount of consent supplies jurisdiction.