reference being covered by virtue of Section 43 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996), the time during which the plaintiff (here, the Applicant) has been prosecuting with due diligence another civil proceeding (here, the challenge petition), whether in a Court of first instance or of appeal or revision, against the defendant (here, the Respondent) shall be excluded, where the proceeding relates to the same matter in issue and is prosecuted in good faith in a Court which, from defect of jurisdiction or other cause of a like nature, is unable to entertain it. Explanation to Section 14 makes certain subsidiary provisions for effecting such exclusion of time. Clause (a) of the Explanation provides that in excluding the time during which a former civil proceeding was pending, the day on which that proceeding was instituted and the day on which it ended shall both be counted. Thus, in the present case, the Applicant will be entitled to the benefit of exclusion of time between 24 May 2014, on which date the earlier petition under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Act”) was filed by the Applicant before the Delhi court and 17 September 2016, when that court returned the petition under Order VII Rule 10 of the Code, giving liberty to the Applicant to file appropriate proceedings before a court of competent jurisdiction; such exclusion would have to be made counting both “24 May 2014” and “17 September 2015” as dates of pendency of the earlier proceeding. If time is so excluded, the present petition is out of time by about 144 days. It is not in dispute that the arbitral award (award of the appellate tribunal) was received by the Applicant on 25 February 2014. The limitation for filing a challenge petition under Section 34 of the Act, thus, begins from that date. Taking that date as the starting date and excluding the period between 24 May 2014 and 17 September 2015 (both
