In short. Yes, but only in a narrow way. On 30 April 2025, in Gayatri Balasamy v. ISG Novasoft Technologies, the Supreme Court held 4:1 that a court can modify an arbitral award in limited cases. It can sever an invalid part. It can correct clerical, computational or typographical errors that are obvious on the record. In some cases it can adjust post-award interest. It can't re-decide the merits or touch pre-award interest. Article 142 is for the Supreme Court alone, used with great caution. You still have to ask in a Section 34 petition, filed within three months of receiving the award, extendable by 30 days.
Is this your situation?
- The award is mostly right. But the total is off by a few lakh, and the tribunal never fixed it.
- The post-award interest rate in the award looks wildly out of line, and it doesn't matter much which side of it you're on.
- One head of claim deals with something that was never referred to the arbitrator. The rest of the award is fine.
- You're drafting a Section 34 petition and can't decide whether to ask for the award to be set aside or just corrected.
- You won, and now you're worried the court will trim your award instead of simply upholding it or throwing it out.
- Your matter is already in a Section 37 appeal, or before the Supreme Court, and you want to know what the 2025 ruling does to it.
Why was modifying an award ever in doubt?
Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 lets a party ask the court to set aside an award. The word modify isn't there. The old 1940 Act, which the 1996 Act replaced, did expressly let courts modify or correct awards. In 1996 Parliament dropped that power, following the UNCITRAL Model Law, which also talks only of setting aside. The thinking was simple. The parties chose the arbitrator's decision, so the court may annul it if it's badly flawed. Rewriting it isn't the court's job.
In practice, that produced strange results. Take an award that was fine except for a wrong interest rate or a plain arithmetic slip. The court could set aside the whole award, or a severable part of it, or send the matter back to the tribunal under Section 34(4). That was all. Setting aside meant a fresh arbitration, sometimes years down the line. In Project Director, NHAI v. M. Hakeem (2021), the Supreme Court said a Section 34 court can't modify an award. Yet in other cases courts, the Supreme Court included, had changed interest rates or amounts, especially when using wider powers. The conflict went to a larger bench in 2024. A Constitution Bench settled it in 2025.
What the Supreme Court decided in Gayatri Balasamy
On 30 April 2025, a five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna held, by 4:1, that courts have a limited power to modify an arbitral award under Sections 34 and 37. The majority's logic: if a court can set aside the whole award, it can set aside part of it, and fixing an obvious error doesn't touch the merits. Justice K.V. Viswanathan dissented on most points.
The majority allowed modification in four situations. One, where the award is severable, the court can set aside the bad part and keep the rest, so long as the two can be separated both legally and in practice. Two, it can correct computational, clerical or typographical errors, and other manifest errors that show on the face of the record and aren't open to debate. Three, it can modify post-award interest in some circumstances. Four, the Supreme Court can use Article 142 of the Constitution. But only with great care, within its limits, and never to rewrite the award on merits.
The majority was just as clear about the limits. Courts can't review the award on merits. Full stop. They can't reassess the evidence or put their own reading of the contract in place of the tribunal's. And they can't modify pendente lite interest, which is interest for the period while the arbitration was going on. If that's wrong, the choice is to set it aside or remit it. The judgment doesn't create an appeal against awards. It gives courts a small set of tools so they needn't throw out an award that's mostly sound.
The provisions you'll be working with
Section 33, Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996
Within 30 days of receiving the award, a party can ask the tribunal to correct computation, clerical or typographical errors. If the parties agree, it can also ask the tribunal to interpret a specific point. And it can ask for an additional award on a claim that was presented but left out. The tribunal can correct errors on its own within 30 days of the award as well. This is where a slip should be fixed first.
Section 34(2), (2A) and (3)
These set out the grounds for setting aside: incapacity, an invalid agreement, lack of notice, an award beyond the scope of the reference, irregular composition or procedure, non-arbitrability and conflict with public policy. For domestic awards there's also patent illegality on the face of the award. You must file within three months of receiving the award, or of the disposal of a Section 33 request. Up to 30 more days are allowed for sufficient cause.
Proviso to Section 34(2)(a)(iv)
Where decisions on matters submitted to arbitration can be separated from decisions on matters that weren't submitted, only the part dealing with matters not submitted may be set aside. The 2025 majority read this as support for a general power of severance.
Section 34(4)
If a party asks, the court may adjourn the Section 34 proceedings so the tribunal can resume the arbitration or do something else to remove the grounds for setting aside. The majority held that the request has to come from a party. It must be recorded.
Section 31(7)
Two clauses matter. Clause (a) covers the stretch from when the cause of action arose until the award is made, subject to whatever the parties agreed. Clause (b) covers the period after the award. The tribunal sets that rate. If it doesn't, the rate is two percent above the current rate of interest prevailing on the date of the award.
Section 37 and Article 142, Constitution of India
Section 37 provides appeals against orders setting aside, or refusing to set aside, an award. The same limited power applies at that stage. Article 142 lets the Supreme Court pass whatever orders complete justice needs, and the majority allowed careful use of it in arbitration matters.
What a court can change after 2025, and what it can't
| What's wrong with the award | Can the court modify it? | Route you'd probably take |
|---|---|---|
| Totals added wrongly, a figure copied wrong, a party's name misspelt | Yes, if it's obvious on the record and nobody can seriously debate it | Section 33 request first; otherwise correction in the Section 34 petition |
| A claim decided under a separate contract that was never referred | Yes, by severing that part, if it can be cut out cleanly | Partial setting aside under Section 34 |
| A post-award interest rate that looks unjustified | Yes, in some circumstances, according to the majority | Section 34 petition asking for the rate to be modified |
| Pendente lite interest worked out wrongly, or not justified | No | Set that part aside, or ask for remission under Section 34(4) |
| Damages assessed on a reading of the evidence you don't accept | No | Only if a Section 34 ground applies. The court won't weigh the evidence again |
| No reasons, or muddled reasons, on one issue | Not by modification, but the court may remit | Ask for remission under Section 34(4) |
| A result that feels harsh but is a possible view of the contract | No | Ssangyong (2019) bars a review on merits |
Time limits, how long things take, and costs
| Step | Deadline | How long it usually takes | Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asking the tribunal for a Section 33 correction | Within 30 days of receiving the award | The tribunal decides within 30 days of the request (60 days for an additional award) | Mostly counsel's time. Some tribunals or institutions may charge a fee |
| Section 34 petition | 3 months from receiving the award or from disposal of the Section 33 request, plus up to 30 days | Section 34(6) asks courts to decide within one year of notice. Many take longer | Court fee as per the court's current schedule (check the current figure) |
| Stay of enforcement under Section 36(3) | File with the Section 34 petition or soon after | Often decided at an early hearing | For money awards, courts commonly want all or part of the amount deposited or secured |
| Appeal under Section 37 | 60 days in commercial-value matters, 90 days otherwise | Anywhere from several months to a few years | Court fee and counsel at the appeal stage |
| Special leave petition to the Supreme Court | Ordinarily 90 days from the High Court's order | Admission stage takes weeks to months | Must be filed by an Advocate-on-Record. Court fee is modest; counsel costs vary |
When can part of an award be cut out?
Of the four powers, this one caused the least argument. Justice Viswanathan agreed with it too. Ask yourself whether you could lift the defective portion out and leave the reasoning for everything else standing. Picture an award on three separate claims: unpaid invoices, machinery that sat idle, and profit lost on a different purchase order that nobody referred. Strike out the third. Uphold the other two. The award holder keeps most of its money, and the parties don't go back to square one.
It doesn't work where the parts are tangled together. Suppose the tribunal's finding on who breached the contract runs through every claim and counterclaim, and that finding is exactly what's wrong. There's nothing to sever. The court then has to choose between setting aside the whole award and remitting it. Petitioners sometimes ask for severance as a fallback, and we think that's sensible. A prayer to set aside the award, or in the alternative to set aside named parts, lets the court act without you having to recast the petition halfway through.
Which errors can the court correct itself?
Only clerical, computational or typographical errors, or ones that are otherwise manifest. The majority's examples jump off the page. A total that doesn't match figures the tribunal itself accepted. A wrong start date for interest when the award gives the right date somewhere else. A party described by the wrong name. But if the court would have to take a view on the evidence, or pick between two possible readings of the award, it isn't a correction any more. It's a merits review. That's still barred.
Most of these mistakes can also go back to the arbitrator under Section 33. Ask within 30 days and the tribunal corrects them itself. No court dates, much less expense. Advocate B.K. Singh's habit, when a client brings in a new award, is to sit with it and tick every number against the tribunal's own findings before he even looks for a Section 34 ground. Wrong totals and wrong dates show up far more often than clients imagine. A two-page Section 33 application, sent while the arbitrator is still available, usually deals with them. Saving them up for Section 34 is a gamble. Opposing counsel will stand up and ask why you never went to the tribunal.
Can the court change the interest?
For interest after the award, sometimes. The majority was willing to let a court push an unjustified post-award rate up or down. Think of a tribunal that picks a rate miles away from what the market charges, without a word of explanation. Or events after the award that make the rate obviously unfair. Courts will usually measure the rate against the fallback in Section 31(7)(b), which is two percent over the current rate of interest on the award date. How those rates are worked out is on our page about interest on arbitral awards under Section 31(7).
Pre-award and pendente lite interest are a different story. They turn on the tribunal's view of the contract and the facts, and the majority held that a court can't modify them. If interest for the period before or during the arbitration is wrong, the court can set that part aside (if it's severable) or remit it to the tribunal. Justice Viswanathan, in dissent, wouldn't have let the court change interest at all. He saw remission under Section 34(4) as the right tool for interest errors that can be cured.
Article 142, and remission under Section 34(4)
Article 142 is the Supreme Court's power to make any order needed to do complete justice. The majority said it can be used in arbitration matters, but with great caution, within constitutional limits, and never to rewrite the award on merits. High Courts don't have it. Nor do Commercial Courts. In practice it may come in where a long-running case reaches the Supreme Court and sending it back would cause injustice through more delay.
Remission gets overlooked a lot. Section 34(4) lets the court put your petition on hold while the arbitrator repairs the defect, perhaps by writing reasons on an issue he passed over, or by redoing an interest calculation. According to the majority, a party has to ask for this and the court has to note the request. Treat that as a drafting rule. If you think the tribunal could cure it, put the prayer for remission in writing, either in the petition or in your reply. The dissent would have let judges send matters back without being asked. It lost on that point.
Asking a court to modify an award, step by step
This order of work keeps every option open and stays inside the strict time limits.
Read the award against its own findings
Check every figure, date, party name and interest period. List the errors that the award itself shows up.
Use Section 33 within 30 days
Ask the tribunal to correct computational, clerical or typographical errors, and to make an additional award on any claim it missed. Your Section 34 period then runs from the date this request is disposed of.
Find a Section 34 ground
Does any ground for setting aside apply? Lack of notice, an award beyond the reference, irregular composition, public policy, or patent illegality for domestic awards. Modification doesn't stand on its own. You still need a Section 34 case.
Draft alternative prayers
Ask the court to set aside the award. In the alternative, ask it to set aside named severable parts, correct listed errors, modify the post-award interest rate, or remit named issues under Section 34(4).
File in time
File within three months of receiving the award or of the Section 33 decision. The extra 30 days are available only for sufficient cause, shown in an application.
Deal with enforcement
If you're the award debtor, apply for a stay under Section 36(3) and offer a deposit or security. The petition alone won't stop enforcement.
Keep the argument narrow
At the hearing, show that each change you want is severance, an obvious error or post-award interest. Stay away from anything that asks the court to reassess evidence.
An invented example: one award, three problems
We've invented this one to show how the pieces fit. It isn't a real case. A distributor of electrical goods in Karol Bagh sells for a Bhiwadi manufacturer, and their agreement sends disputes to arbitration seated in New Delhi. The manufacturer terminates. A sole arbitrator then gives the distributor Rs 86 lakh for incentives never paid and stock sent back. On top, he gives Rs 22 lakh for losses on a warehousing deal. That deal had a dispute clause of its own and nobody ever referred it. Three things go wrong on paper. The heads of claim are added up to Rs 1.18 crore when they come to Rs 1.08 crore. Post-award interest is set at 24 percent a year. No reasons are given for it.
The manufacturer lets the 30 days under Section 33 slip by. It goes straight to Section 34. Post Gayatri Balasamy, the court has room to act. The arithmetic can be put right, because the award's own numbers give the true total. The Rs 22 lakh warehousing award can be cut out, since it dealt with a matter outside the reference and stands on its own. The 24 percent rate, with nothing to explain it, can be examined and reduced to something defensible. The finding that the termination was wrongful stays untouched, though. The court won't go there. So the distributor walks away with an enforceable award for the bulk of its claim, and nobody has to restart the arbitration.
Papers to collect for a Section 34 modification case
From the arbitration file
- The signed award, and when and how it reached you
- Statement of claim, defence and any counterclaim
- Terms of reference or the notice invoking arbitration, so you can show what was actually referred
- Procedural orders and hearing minutes
- Your Section 33 request, if you made one, and the tribunal's answer
To prove the numbers
- A worksheet that recalculates every head of claim and the interest from the award's own findings
- The contract clauses on rates, interest and payment
- Bank rate or lending rate data for the period, if post-award interest is being challenged
For filing
- A board resolution or authority letter
- Proof of the date you received the award, like the courier receipt or the email
- If you're filing in the extra 30 days, a condonation application with your reasons
What the ruling means if you won the award
On balance, it helps you. Before 2025, one error could put the whole award in danger, because a court that couldn't modify might feel forced to set aside more than it needed to. Now the court can trim the award and leave the rest enforceable. If you're facing a Section 34 petition as award holder, a sensible move is to concede the obvious errors early and offer corrections. The court then sees a narrow dispute. That's what you want.
Enforcement rules haven't changed. Not one bit. Filing a Section 34 petition still doesn't automatically stay the award. The debtor has to apply under Section 36(3) and usually deposit or secure the amount. If you hold an award, read how to enforce an arbitral award in India and how courts deal with stay applications. Once the award is final, it's executed the same way as a court decree, which our sister site covers on its page on execution of decrees.
Foreign awards and MSME Council awards
Not in the same way. A foreign award can't be brought before an Indian court under Section 34 in the first place. The only question here is enforcement under Section 48. Yes or no. There is one partial exception: under the proviso to Section 48(1)(c), if the bit that goes beyond the submission can be peeled away, the court can enforce what remains. Call it severance by another name. Correcting or rewriting a foreign award, though, is off the table. Our guide on how to enforce a foreign arbitral award in India covers that process. Justice Viswanathan worried that if Indian courts start modifying awards, India-seated awards might struggle in foreign courts. The majority disagreed. Under the New York Convention it's the law of the seat that counts, it said, so the worry was misplaced.
An award from an MSME Facilitation Council is treated like any other award under the 1996 Act. A buyer who wants to fight it files under Section 34. The same limited modification power is available. But there's a catch for buyers. Section 19 of the MSMED Act makes them put 75 percent of the awarded amount into court before the petition is even entertained. A new Section 19 is provided for in the MSMED (Amendment) Act, 2026. We hadn't found it notified by late October 2026, so check where things stand before you rely on either version. Our note on whether a buyer can challenge an MSME Council award goes through the deposit rule.
Mistakes we see when people ask for modification
- Skipping Section 33. A clerical or arithmetic slip is quickest to fix before the tribunal, within 30 days. The court may well ask why you didn't go there.
- Dressing up a merits complaint as an error. Not liking how the arbitrator read the evidence doesn't make it a manifest error. Calling it one drags down the rest of your petition.
- Praying only for setting aside. Without an alternative prayer for severance, correction or remission, you've left the judge with all or nothing.
- Trying to modify pendente lite interest. The majority said that can't be done. Ask for it to be set aside or remitted.
- Missing the deadline. Three months plus 30 days under Section 34(3) is absolute, and nothing in the 2025 ruling softens it.
- Forgetting the stay. However good your modification case, the award holder can go ahead with execution unless you get a stay.
Where this leaves Section 34 challenges
Narrow, as it always was. No review on merits, because Ssangyong Engineering v. NHAI (2019) is still good law, and no new grounds for setting aside either. The difference after Gayatri Balasamy is in the outcome. A ground that hits only one part of the award, or a defect that's purely clerical, no longer has to sink the whole thing. The grounds themselves are explained in our guides on how to challenge an arbitral award under Section 34 and the grounds on which courts set awards aside. Appeals are covered in appeals under Section 37. For DIAC-administered matters, our sister site explains how to challenge a DIAC award.
Our guess is that the High Courts will tread carefully with this for a few years. Lawyers will fight over what manifest means. They'll fight over when a post-award rate stops being justified. Those questions get answered one case at a time. In our experience, the petitions that land are the modest ones: precise numbers, each tied to a paragraph of the award. Advocate B.K. Singh attaches a single-page table to any petition he drafts seeking a correction or a lower post-award rate. One column shows what the award says. The next shows what it should say. A third gives the paragraph that proves it. A Delhi High Court bench may have a long Section 34 list that day. If it can confirm the mistake in two minutes, you've done more than twenty pages of submissions would.
What to do this week
Write down the date you received the award. Both the 30-day Section 33 period and the three-month Section 34 period run from it. Recalculate the award's figures from its own findings and list any errors. Mark the claims that went outside the reference. Look at the post-award interest rate and see whether reasons were given. Then decide. Will a Section 33 request do the job, or do you need a Section 34 petition with alternative prayers? More arbitration guides are on our home page.
If you'd like the award and its figures checked before time runs out, or want to hear how courts are applying the 2025 ruling, get in touch with Advocate B.K. Singh's team through the contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Can a High Court increase the amount an arbitrator awarded?
Rarely. Only in the narrow ways the 2025 ruling allows, like correcting an obvious arithmetic error or adjusting post-award interest. It can't increase damages just because it thinks the arbitrator undervalued the claim.
Does the 2025 judgment apply to cases that were already pending?
A Constitution Bench ruling like this declares what the Act has always meant. So it's generally applied to Section 34 petitions and appeals pending when it was delivered. Check how your court has dealt with any transitional point in your case.
Who was the dissenting judge in Gayatri Balasamy?
Justice K.V. Viswanathan. He accepted severance but held that courts can't otherwise modify awards, interest included. He preferred remission under Section 34(4).
Can a District Commercial Court modify an award, or only the High Court?
Any court hearing a Section 34 petition or a Section 37 appeal has the limited power. Article 142 is the Supreme Court's alone.
Can a consent award under Section 30 be modified?
Seldom needed. A consent award records the parties' settlement, so there's rarely any ground to challenge it. Clerical errors in it can be corrected under Section 33. If they're obvious, the court can correct them too.
Can the court correct an award that names the wrong party?
Yes, if the error is obvious from the record and nobody disputes the substance. A Section 33 request to the tribunal within 30 days is quicker.
Does a Section 33 request give you more time for Section 34?
Yes. Under Section 34(3), the three months run from the date the tribunal disposes of the Section 33 request.
Will modification make the award harder to enforce abroad?
The majority didn't think so. The New York Convention looks to the law of the seat, and that law now allows limited modification. Foreign courts haven't tested this much yet, so check before you enforce abroad.
Advocate B.K. Singh
Founder of B.K. Singh & Associates. MCA, LL.B., LL.M. More than twenty years in practice before the Supreme Court, the Delhi High Court, district and commercial courts in Delhi NCR, and tribunals.
This guide explains the law in general terms and is not legal advice. For advice on your own papers, contact the team.