There is a particular variety of legal catastrophe that feels procedural in origin but lands with substantive force: the kind where a dispute that has survived years of hearings, documentary disclosure, and witness examination becomes vulnerable not because of anything on the merits, but because a deadline slipped. The arbitration clock ran out. Nobody applied in time. The tribunal's mandate expired. The award that was almost ready will now never be made.

Or so the argument went. The Supreme Court, in September 2024, declined to accept it.

A Deadline That Became a Trap

Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 was introduced by the 2015 amendments with a clear enough purpose: Indian arbitrations had developed a reputation for running as long as the parties allowed. Parliament responded with a twelve-month time limit for tribunals to make awards after pleadings are complete, extendable by six months with party consent. Where even that window closes without an award, the mandate terminates — unless a court extends it under Section 29A(4) on sufficient cause shown.

In the years after the amendment, a question accumulated that the provision did not resolve: did the application for extension need to be filed before the mandate expired, or could it be filed after? The High Courts disagreed. Delhi, Bombay, and Kerala allowed post-expiry applications. Calcutta refused: once the period passed, the mandate was terminated as a matter of law, and no court order could revive what had already died.

In Rohan Builders vs Berger Paints, both the twelve-month statutory period and the six-month consensual extension had run. No application had been made before either window closed. When Rohan Builders approached the court post-expiry seeking extension, the Calcutta High Court refused. The Supreme Court, resolving the split, reversed.

Three Reasons the Clock Does Not Stop at Midnight

The court's analysis worked across three registers simultaneously.

The first was textual. Section 29A(4) expressly provides that the court may extend the period "either prior to or after the expiry of the period specified." That phrase is not incidental. If the legislature had intended applications to be filed only before expiry, the words "or after" would serve no purpose. Courts are reluctant to treat statutory language as surplusage, and the provision says what it says.

The second was structural. Section 29A contains a proviso that preserves the arbitrators' records and entitlement to fees "until the mandate has been terminated." The court observed that this proviso makes sense only if termination is a distinct event — something that occurs when a court declines to extend, rather than something that happens automatically by the passage of time. If the mandate died at midnight on the expiry date, there would be nothing to preserve until any later point. Read purposively, the proviso implies that expiry sets the clock but does not end the proceeding.

The third reason was purposive, and perhaps the most practically important. The 2015 amendment was enacted to speed Indian arbitrations up, not to create an irreversible trap triggered by a missed filing deadline. A rule under which an inadvertently late application results in permanent termination — however long the arbitration has run, however close to a final award it has come — produces results more disproportionate than anything the original delay had caused. Courts interpret remedial legislation to advance its purpose, and the purpose here was efficient resolution, not punitive termination.

What the Mandate Looks Like After Expiry

The ruling has a specific doctrinal consequence that practitioners need to keep precise. The mandate does not die at expiry — it is suspended. It cannot produce a valid award, but it can be resurrected by a court order extending the period. The court retains discretion over whether and on what terms to extend: it may reduce the arbitrators' fees where the tribunal's conduct contributed to the delay, and it will consider whether the delay is explicable or the product of something more culpable.

That discretion matters. The ruling is not a licence to treat arbitral time limits as suggestions. An unexplained failure to apply before either window closed will not attract the same sympathy as a situation where the tribunal was slow, the parties were cooperating in good faith, and a bureaucratic oversight produced the late application. The extension power is broad, but it is exercised on the specific record before the court.

The Takeaway

The clearest guidance for parties in arbitration is to apply for extension before either the twelve-month or six-month window closes — not because a post-expiry application is unavailable, but because a pre-expiry application is easier to obtain and less likely to attract conditions on fees or other complications.

For parties who discover, having missed both deadlines, that they are sitting on an expired mandate: the arbitration is not necessarily over. Apply to the relevant court under Section 29A(4) and place before it whatever explanation exists for the delay. The Supreme Court has confirmed the jurisdiction to extend exists, and that the passage of the expiry date is not, by itself, a reason to decline it.

For arbitrators, the message runs in both directions. The extension mechanism does not excuse delay of the tribunal's own making. Where the court identifies that the mandate expired because the tribunal moved too slowly, it has the power — and may have the inclination — to reduce fees as a condition of the extension order. The clock, once wound, should be kept.