Singapore Supreme Court sets aside ‘copy-pasted’ arbitral award by former CJI Dipak Misra’s tribunal

The Singapore Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside an arbitral award passed by a tribunal presided over by former Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra after finding that nearly half of the contents of the award had been “copy-pasted” from earlier awards passed by the same presiding arbitrator, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justice Steven Chong in the Court of Appeal said that new arguments in the matter were made because of “the slightly different factual matrix presented by the arbitration”.

“Despite this, the parallel awards were used as templates in drafting the award to a very substantial degree,” the bench was quoted as saying. “It is undisputed that at least 212 paragraphs from the parallel awards were retained in the 451-paragraph award. This has several implications.”

The dispute pertains to a contract between a special-purpose vehicle managing freight corridors in India and a consortium of three companies involved in infrastructure projects.

The dispute was about whether the consortium was entitled to additional payments under their contract following a notification by the Indian government in 2017 that increased minimum wages, Bar and Bench reported.

The matter was taken to arbitration in Singapore under the International Chamber of Commerce rules after negotiations failed. The tribunal ruled in favour of the consortium in November 2023.

Besides Misra, the...

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