Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
Courts sometimes try to shortcut a writ petition by sending the parties to an arbitrator and then decreeing the award. This is the authority that they may not, and it belongs to the s. 5 theme of the paper: the Act, and only the Act, supplies the routes into and out of arbitration.
Facts
A High Court, exercising its writ jurisdiction, referred a matter to an arbitrator and proposed to pass a decree on the award when it was submitted.
Held
A High Court in the exercise of its writ jurisdiction has no power to refer the matter to an arbitrator and to pass a decree on the award being submitted before it.
Reasoning
Step one — arbitration is consensual and statutory. Under the 1996 Act there is no provision for reference to arbitration by intervention of the court. A reference arises from the parties' agreement, and the court's role is only what the Act gives it.
Step two — writ jurisdiction is supervisory. Article 226 exists to test the legality of State action, not to try private claims and pass decrees on them.
Step three — the award has its own route. An award becomes enforceable as a decree under s. 36 once the time for challenge has passed. A court that decrees an award itself bypasses ss. 34 and 36 and the safeguards in them.
Exam use
It opens: Discuss the extent of judicial intervention in arbitration — as the procedural counterpart to P. Anand Gajapathi Raju on s. 5.
Pair it with Afcons, which shows what a court may do within a suit: refer the parties under s. 89 CPC, but to arbitration or conciliation only with the consent of all parties, and to Lok Adalat, mediation or judicial settlement without it. Where parties do enter into an arbitration agreement during pending proceedings, they must then proceed in accordance with the 1996 Act.
Use it in advice to resist a well-meaning suggestion from the bench in a writ matter: the correct order is to relegate the parties to their remedy, not to improvise a reference.
It does not decide that a High Court may never encourage settlement in a writ matter; it decides that it cannot convert the writ proceeding into an arbitration and decree the result.