A party can withdraw its consent for reference to Arbitration any time before the Court's action: Gujarat High Court

A party can withdraw its consent for reference to Arbitration any time before the Court's action: Gujarat High Court

The bench said a person has the right to retract his application

The Gujarat High Court has held that a party can withdraw its consent for reference to arbitration under the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) any time before the court's action.

The bench of Justice Umesh A. Trivedi was dealing with a special civil application under Article 227 against an order of the civil judge. The application jointly provided to the arbitrator by the parties to the proceedings under Section 89(2)(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, was rejected on the ground that the plaintiff, who initially consented, later withdrew the consent for sending it to the arbitrator.

The petitioner contended that since both the parties consented to send the dispute to the arbitrator, the court could not reject the application on the ground that the respondent withdrew its consent.

The petitioner argued that once the respondent agreed to the appointment of an arbitrator and after the filing of an application, he could not withdraw it from arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act.

However, the court rejected the argument of the petitioner. It held that even if a party initially agreed to have the matter referred to the arbitrator, it had the right to withdraw its consent before the court took up the matter.

Referring to Section 4 of the Act read with Section 89 of the Code, the court stated that it was misconceived and dismissed the petition.