Bona fide prosecution before a court without jurisdiction may be excluded, preserving limitation for a Section 34 arbitration challenge.

Time spent in bona fide prosecution of a Section 34 challenge before a court lacking jurisdiction can be excluded under Section 14 of the Limitation Act when computing limitation. The relevant delay must be assessed from the actual return and re-presentation of the papers, not merely from the date of the return order. On the stated facts, the applicants acted without lack of bona fides and re-presented the papers immediately after return, so the Section 34 application was treated as within limitation and the time-bar finding was set aside.

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Issues: Whether the time spent in prosecuting the challenge to the arbitral award before a court lacking jurisdiction could be excluded so as to save the application under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 from limitation.

Analysis: The challenge was initially pursued before a court later found to be not competent, and the papers were subsequently presented before the proper court. The governing principle applied was that Section 14 of the Limitation Act permits exclusion of time spent in bona fide prosecution of proceedings in a court without jurisdiction. The Court also accepted that the relevant delay had to be tested with reference to the actual endorsement and return of the papers, and not merely the date on which an order for return was made. On the facts, the appellants acted without lack of bona fides and re-presented the papers immediately after return by the first court.

Conclusion: The application under Section 34 was held to be within limitation, and the finding that it was time-barred was set aside.

Ratio Decidendi: Time spent in bona fide prosecution before a court lacking jurisdiction is liable to be excluded under Section 14 of the Limitation Act, and limitation for a Section 34 challenge must be computed after such exclusion.

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