JUDGMENT
S.N. Pathak, J.
1. The aforesaid miscellaneous appeals have been heard analogously and this common judgment shall govern all those appeals. These appeals arose out of the Money Suit Nos. 13/74, 14/74, 114/74, Title Suit Nos. 117/73, 118/ 73, 309/76, 310/76, 311/76. Title Suit Nos. 117 and 118 of 1973 were filed by the defendant-respondents and the rest of the suits were filed by the plaintiff-appellants. The aforesaid suits were referred to an Arbitrator on consent of both the parties in the lower Court and the Arbitrator rendered three separate awards for the aforesaid suits which were exhibited as Ext. D, Ext. D/1 and Ext. D/2. However, the plaintiffs filed objection to the awards given by named Arbitrator, Sri Girija Nandan Prasad (retired High Court Judge) and after disposing of the objection, the learned Sub-Judge-XIII, Patna, passed his impugned judgment dated 15-5-1995, against which these appeals have been prefened. The awards rendered by the Arbitrator were directed to be made rule of the Court.
2. The main plank of challenging the impugned judgment of the Sub-Judge is that the Arbitrator misconducted himself in deciding the reference and in this connection, it was, firstly, pointed out that the Arbitrator had almost become mentally and physically unfit to conduct the proceedings of the reference and, therefore, the awards rendered by him suffered from infirmities to the point of illegality. It this connection, it was submitted that the award given by the Arbitrator did not contain any certificate that the award prepared was at his dictation and corroded by him. Besides the above, all the three awards contain the signatures of the Arbitrator which were dissimilar to each other. I shall dispose of these objections first. The concerned Arbitrator, Sri Girija Nandan Prasad, was appointed by both the parties in the lower Court on mutual consent. He was admittedly a retired Judge of the High Court, when his name was proposed by both the parties and the reference was made to him after both the parties consented. So, if at all a ret/red High Court Judge was incapable of deciding a proceeding of the reference by the Court, it should have occurred to the plaintiff-appeliants at the initial stage itself whether their Arbitrator shall be able to conduct the proceedings properly and whether he was having sound physical and mental health, The reference was made on 20-8-1983 and the awards were sent to the Court on 5-7-1988. There was no medical certificate produced by the plaintiff to support the fact that Sri Girija Nandan Prasad had become physically or mentally incapable of deciding a reference. So, I do not think the awards will become irregular or improper on the grounds mentioned above. So far the non-appending the certificate that the award was prepared at his dictation by the Arbitrator, it will not vitiate the award. It was next submitted by the appellants’ lawyer that the signatures of the Arbitrator appearing on the three awards are dissimilar and, therefore, it appeared that the awards were prepared by someone else and the signatures of the Arbitrator were forged. However, this allegation also does not appear to be correct because an expert was examined and he opined that even though the signatures were dissimilar here and there, all the signatures were of the same person who was Arbitrator, Sri Girija Nandan Prasad. So, there was no question of any forgery of signature of the Arbitrator. It is a natural phenomenon that signatures of even one person, even though he may be physically and mentally sound, may become dissimilar and may vary in its face look from time to time. This is so because a person who puts his signature on the paper uses his pen according to his moods and mental make up at a particular time. So, there may be certain physical variations in the signatures at different times. But a hand-writing expert can very well detect the variations and dis-similarities and give definite opinion that the signatures are of the same person. In the instant case, the expert was examined and he vouch safed to the genuineness of those signatures which tallied with the admitted signatures of the Arbitrator, Girija Nandan Prasad. So, the plea of the plaintiff-appellants in this connection is also fit to be dismissed.
3. Another illegal feature of the award was pointed out by the appellant and it was submitted that defendant-respondents had failed to file W.S. in M.S. No. 13/74 in the Court, but he was allowed to file counter claim before the Arbitrator which was already time-barred. So, the Arbitrator travelled beyond his reference and settled a claim of the defendant-respondents which were already time-barred. In this connection, it is to be noted that the defendant-respondents had already filed Title Suit Nos. 117 and 118 of 1973 and these suits were also referred to the Arbitrator for decision along with other money suits and title suits filed by the plaintiff-appellant. In the counter claim in the same money suit, the defendant-respondents had not set up any new claim and, therefore, there was no question of the counter claim being time barred. Therefore, the Arbitrator allowed the counter claim to be accepted and forms part of the arbitration proceeding. I do not think that he committed any illegality or misconducted himself by permitting this counter claim to be set up by the defendant-respondents. Moreover, the plaintiff-appellant participated in the proceedings of their reference and, therefore, also question of any time bar to the counter claim or any misconduct on the part of the Arbitrator are all irrelevant which cannot be given any serious consideration before this Court. The next ground of attack upon the awards rendered by the Arbitrator was that the Arbitrator should have given separate awards in all the separate, suits, but he rendered three composite awards, Ext. D, Ext. D/1 and Ext. D/2. In this connection, I am of the opinion that since all the suits were referred to the Arbitrator and the Arbitrator heard all the suits analogously, there was nothing wrong in rendering three awards settling claims and counter claims of the parties. So, on this score neither the award shall become illegal nor irregular nor there can be dissatisfaction on this ground alone. It was then pointed out that the Arbitrator did not dispatch his all the order-sheets drawn up by him, together with depositions and documents which were exhibited before him which under the Arbitration Act he was duty-bound to despatch to the Court which made the reference.
In this connection, I find that he plaintiff-appellants themselves had gone exhibited certain order-sheets of the reference proceeding and they had also got exhibited certain documents. So, it is apparent that the Arbitrator must have despatched the depositions, documents etc. In this connection, it was further pointed out that the Arbitrator had drawn up an order-sheet which indicated that the Arbitrator shall despatch the documents etc. later. However, I find that even though there may or may not be forwarding note along with the documents despatched to the Court, it is apparent and it has been admitted in the memo of appeal that the documents and depositions were on the record of the Sub-Judge, which were, perhaps, sent or substituted by the defendant-respondents on his own discretion. This statement in the memo of appeal is neither convincing nor plausible because I find that the depositions and documents and order-sheets of the arbitration proceeding were got exhibited by the plaintiff-appellant in support or proof of the illegality or irregularity of the awards rendered by the Arbitrator. So, I am of the opinion that the Arbitrator himself had sent those documents and depositions to the Court concerned. The award, therefore, cannot suffer from any illegality on this allegation of the plaintiff-appellants. The awards rendered by the Arbitrator were received by the Court on 5-7-1988 and the impugned judgment was passed on 15-5-1995. The impugned judgment shows that the order-sheets of the Arbitrator, certain documents and depositions were exhibited when the plaintiff-appellants raised objection to the award rendered by the Arbitrator. From the aforesaid facts and circumstances, it must appear that the depositions, documents etc. must have been despatched to the Court and when these were exhibited, that will mean that the parties relied on those documents and, so, they were exhibited in proving or disproving of the illegality or otherwise of the awards. So, the allegation of misconduct on the part of the Arbitrator arising from the non-despatch of the documents etc. to the Court in time did not appear to be convincing. It was almost lastly submitted by the appellants, lawyer that the Arbitrator misconducted himself and appeared to be in a hurry because of his interested ness in the defendant-respondent in view of the fact that there was a petition filed by the plaintiff-appellants on 20 6-1988 to return the reference to the Court, but the Arbitrator proceeded with the arbitration and hurriedly submitted his award on 5-7-1988. in the meantime, when the Arbitrator refused to return the reference the appellants filed a petition before the Court on 23-6-1988 for removing the Arbitrator and recall the reference. But the Court fixed 5-7-1988 for hearing on the aforesaid petition. However, before the petition could be disposed of, the Arbitrator concluded the proceeding before him and although a prayer was made before him on 3-7-1988 for awaiting the orders from the Court, the Arbitrator submitted his award on 5-7-1988. The aforesaid circumstances were pointed out to show that the Arbitrator was in collusion with the defendant-respondents. In this connection, I am to opine that the Court failed to stay the proceeding before the Arbitration even though prayer was made before him on 23-6-1988 itself. It is, therefore, apparent that the Court was not convinced of the urgency on the part of the plaintiff-appellants in seeking the stay of the proceedings before the Arbitrator and the Court was also not, perhaps, satisfied with the all equations on the grounds on which the stay of the proceedings before the Arbitrator and recall of the reference was sought and that is why, perhaps, no stay was granted. Of course, the time of rendering the award was 15-7-1988, but simply because the Arbitrator submitted his award before a week or so, that will not show that the Arbitrator had colluded himself with the defendant-respondents or that he was in any way influenced by the latter, so that the award could be rendered illegal on account of his misconduct in this behalf. The misconduct on the part of the Arbitrator was next based on his non-submission of his own remuneration etc. along with the remuneration of staff as well. In this concession, no specific document or instance was referred to before this Court, from which it would be apparent that the Arbitrator had not submitted account of his remuneration of remuneration or his staff. Moreover, simply non-submission of the account of Arbitrator’s remuneration or the remuneration of his staff will not render the awards illegal or irregular.
4. As a result of the aforesaid discussions, I am of the opinion that the awards rendered by the Arbitrator did not suffer from any illegality or irregularity which require any interference by this Court. The learned Sub-Judge had discussed all the objections of the appellants to the relevant awards and he gave an exhaustive judgment which also does not require any interference by this Court.
5. In the result, these, aforesaid, appeals are dismissed.
