learned arbitrator dismissing the Section 16 application. For this reason alone, the judgment under appeal needs to be set aside. Even otherwise, as has been correctly pointed out by Mr Rohatgi, the judgment under appeal goes into the merits of the case and states that the action of putting the Contractor and his Directors “ on holiday ” is not a consequence of the termination of the agreement. This is wholly incorrect as it is only because of the termination that the show-cause notice dated 18-10-2017 proposing to impose a twoyear ban/blacklisting was sent. Even otherwise, entering into the general thicket of disputes between the parties does not behove a court exercising jurisdiction under Article 227, where only jurisdictional errors can be corrected. Therefore to state that the ban order was passed under a General Contract Manual and not Clause 18 of the agreement, besides being incorrect, would also be incorrect for the reason that the General Contract Manual does not mean that such order was issued as an administrative order invoking the executive power, but was only as an order which emanated from the contract itself. Further to state that “serious disputes” as to jurisdiction seem to have cropped up is not the same thing as saying that the Arbitral Tribunal lacked inherent jurisdiction in going into and deciding the Section 17 application. In point of fact, the Arbitral Tribunal was well within its jurisdiction in referring to the contract and the ban order and then applying the law and f i nally issuing the stay order. Even if it be accepted that the principle laid down by Section 41( e ) of the Specif i c Relief Act was infracted, in that damages could have been granted, as a result of which an injunction ought not to have been issued, is a mere error of law and not an error of jurisdiction, much less an error of inherent jurisdiction going to the root of the matter. Therefore, even otherwise, the High Court judgment cannot be sustained and is set aside.
