Supreme Court: Jurisdiction limited to certified legal question in arbitral award enforcement

The Supreme Court, comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Apresh Kumar Singh, dismissed the appeal filed by M/s Royal Construction Company Pvt. Ltd. seeking enforcement of an arbitral award dated 10 August 2002 against M/s National Projects Construction. The Court held that it could not entertain any clarification of factual matters and limited its jurisdiction to the certified substantial question of law.

Royal Construction held that the award‑debtor had paid the principal amount in Indian rupees in 2009 and asked the Supreme Court to confirm the payment and the conversion date of the award. The respondent contested the alleged 2009 payment and argued that the Court should decide whether it could examine such factual issues. The central question was whether the Supreme Court could be called upon to resolve factual disputes beyond the certified legal question concerning the award’s conversion date.

The Court observed that the earlier judgment had addressed only the conversion‑date issue and had not examined any factual deposits. It reiterated that supervisory review of ongoing execution proceedings rests with the court conducting the execution, not with the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the appeal and the accompanying miscellaneous application were dismissed, and the parties were directed to raise any execution‑related objections before the appropriate lower court.

Read the judgment and its head note on DLJ: M/S Royal Construction Company Pvt. Ltd vs M/S National Projects Construction ... (2026 INSC 1167).