In Suo Moto <\/em>Writ Petition (C) No. 3\/2020, by order dated 23.03.2020 and 06.05.2020, the Hon\u2019ble Supreme Court ordered that period of limitation prescribed under all the provisions of Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, shall be extended w.e.f. 15.03.2020 till further orders. The Ld. Attorney General\u00a0 had sought a minor modification in the aforesaid orders. Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 does not prescribe a period of limitation\u00a0\u00a0 but fixes a time to do certain acts, i.e. making an arbitral award within a prescribed time. Similarly, Section 23(4) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 provides for a time period of 6 months for the completion of the statement of claim and defence. Under Section 12A of the Commercial Courts\u00a0 Act,2015, time is prescribed for completing the process of compulsory pre- litigation, mediation and settlement. Service of notices, summons and exchange of pleadings\/documents, is a requirement of virtually every legal proceeding. Service of notices, summons and pleadings etc. have not been possible during the period\u00a0\u00a0 of lockdown because this involves visits to post offices, courier companies orphysical delivery of notices, summons and pleadings. There was also a prayer to extend the period of validity of cheques.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Parties had approached the Hon\u2019ble Supreme Court for extending the time where limitation was to expire during the period when there was a lockdown in view\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of COVID-19 or the time to perform a particular act was to expire during the lockdown.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Orders in Suo Moto <\/em>Writ Petition (C) No. 3\/2020, by order dated 23.03.2020 and 06.05.2020 would also apply for extension of the time limit prescribed under Section 23(4) of the said Act. Time limit under Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, was liable to be extended. Therefore, the Hon\u2019ble Court directed that the said time shall stand extended from the time when the lockdown is lifted plus 45 days thereafter. It was also directed that Service of notices, summons and pleadings etc. may be effected by e-mail, FAX, commonly used instant messaging services, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc. However, if a party intends to effect service by means of said instant messaging services, it was directed that\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in addition thereto, the party must also effect service of the same document\/ documents by e-mail, simultaneously on the same date.<\/p>\n Regarding extension of period of validity of cheques, the Hon\u2019ble Court found\u00a0 that the said period has not been prescribed by any Statute but it is a period prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India under Section 35-A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. The Hon\u2019ble Court did not consider it appropriate to interfere with the period prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India, particularly,\u00a0 since the entire banking system functions on the basis of the period so prescribed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It therefore held that the Reserve Bank of India may in its discretion, alter such period as it thinks fit. (C) No. 3\/2020, dated 10-07-2020).<\/p>\n Editorial<\/em><\/strong>: This order is modification of the order passed by the Hon\u2019ble Supreme Court In re: Cognizance for Extension of Limitation 2020 SCC OnLine SC 434.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The order of the honourable Court would alleviate hardships faced by people in completing such formalities during the pandemic as courier\/postal services have been severely affected. The decision is\u00a0 one of its kind and shall be\u00a0 available\u00a0\u00a0 in cases limited to the period of pandemic and such other cases where it is established that the physical service is\u00a0 not\u00a0 possible. It\u00a0 also has\u00a0 the\u00a0 potential,\u00a0 on being legalized, of becoming the standard practice in normal times with the increasing uptake of information technology.<\/p>\n \u201cMeasures must always\u00a0 in\u00a0 a\u00a0 progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n – Mahatma Gandhi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Constitution of India ,1950Issue<\/h3>\n
Held<\/h3>\n
\nArt. 141: Law declared by the Hon\u2019ble Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts with in territory of India – Covid-19 – Extension of limitation period due to Covid-19 Lock down- Service of all notices, summons and exchange of pleadings may be effected by e-mail, FAX, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc in addition to service of the same document by e-mail simultaneously on the same date – The Reserve Bank of India may consider whether the validity period of a cheque under the Negotiable Instruments Act should be extended or not [Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 S.23(4), 29A, Banking Regulation Act,1949, S.35A, Commercial Courts Act, 2015, S.12A Constitution of India, 1949, Art 141, Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, S.46, Limitation Act 1908 , S.5]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allied-laws"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-3qr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13172,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171\/revisions\/13172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}