A bench comprising of Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Siddhartha Varma of the Allahabad High Court passed orders on a PIL concerning justice administration amid the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19. The Bench passed orders to extend the 12-month statutory period prescribed to conclude arbitral proceedings.
In addition, directions with regards to the release of persons grated bail who were not released for want of sureties were also issued.
Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 stipulates a 12-month statutory period to conclude arbitral proceedings except international commercial arbitration. However, in view of the extraordinary circumstances presented by the nationwide lockdown, the Allahabad High Court issued an order to extend this period. The Court opined,
“Accordingly, it is directed that if in any arbitral proceedings the pleadings under sub-section (4) of Section 23 of the Act have been completed and the period of twelve months has expired or is going to be expired on or after 25th March, 2020 then the same stands extended upto 25th May, 2020.”
Further, another issue concerning the stay on the release of prisoners who had been granted bail on or before March 15th due to non-availability of sureties was taken up by the Court and directions were issued in this regard. The Court took into consideration the difficulty to arrange for sureties during a nationwide lockdown and consequently ordered that such prisoner be released on personal bonds for now.
The Court opined,
“… all the accused-applicants whose bail applications came to be allowed on or after 15th March, 2020 but have not been released due to non-availability of sureties as a consequence to lockdown may be released on executing personal bond as ordered by the Court or to the satisfaction of the jail authorities where such accused is imprisoned, provided the accused-applicants undertakes to furnish required sureties within a period of one month from the date of his/her actual release.”
