Pending challenge to arbitral award bars execution where finality is absent and enforcement would pre-empt the competent court.

An arbitral award should not be enforced by execution when a section 34 challenge is already pending and the award has not attained finality. The discussion explains that territorial jurisdiction under civil procedure may exist, but that alone does not justify attachment or execution where a competent court is already seized of a challenge to the award. A contractual jurisdiction clause and the earlier Bangalore proceedings were material to the restraint on enforcement. The practical effect was that the executing court should have stayed its hands rather than proceed with attachment of movable property.

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Issues: Whether the executing court at Raichur ought to have entertained the execution petition and ordered attachment of the respondent's movable properties when an application to set aside the arbitral award was already pending before the Bangalore court, and when the contract contained a clause conferring jurisdiction on Bangalore courts.

Analysis: The appeal turned on the interaction between the territorial jurisdiction of courts under the general civil procedure law and the scheme of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The Court accepted that the Raichur court was not wholly without jurisdiction, but held that this did not justify proceeding with execution when the award had not attained finality and a prior challenge under section 34 was already pending before the Bangalore court. The contractual jurisdiction clause and the earlier pending proceedings at Bangalore were material considerations. In these circumstances, the executing court ought to have stayed its hands rather than enforcing the award by attachment.

Conclusion: The execution proceedings at Raichur should not have been entertained and the attachment orders were rightly set aside; the contention in favour of the appellant was rejected and the respondent succeeded.

Final Conclusion: The appeal failed because enforcement of the arbitral award could not properly proceed in the face of the pending challenge to the award and the contractual and jurisdictional setting of the dispute.

Ratio Decidendi: Where an arbitral award is under a pending challenge for setting aside and the award has not attained finality, an executing court should not enforce it in a manner that pre-empts the competent court's determination of that challenge.

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