The Gayatri Balasamy Case: A Turning Point In Judicial Intervention In Arbitration?

The Hon'ble Madras High Court in ISG Novasoft Technologies Ltd v. Gayatri Balasamy¹ dealt with a challenge to an Arbitral Award arising from an employment dispute wherein the Arbitral Tribunal had awarded compensation to the employee. The Award, however, allegedly suffered from a quantification error concerning back wages and consequential dues. Rather than adhering to the traditional norm of either setting aside the award or remitting it to the Arbitral Tribunal for reconsideration, the Hon'ble High Court chose an unorthodox path by modifying the award directly purporting to rectify what it termed a manifest and severable error.

The Hon'ble Madras High Court justified this intervention by reasoning that the defect in the award pertained solely to a computational aspect which could be corrected judicially without disturbing the tribunal's reasoning on liability or factual findings. This marked an apparent deviation from the judgment pronounced by the Hon'ble Supreme