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Bettesworth Construction
arbitration

Bombay High Court Upholds Two Construction Expense Awards but Sets Aside Loss-of-Profits Award

A 2019 Bombay High Court ruling left awards for performance-guarantee and casting-yard expenses intact but set aside a contractor’s loss-of-overheads-and-profits award as unsupported by evidence, as summarized by LawText.

By Bettesworth Construction Team 3 min read
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The Bombay High Court partially allowed the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay’s challenge to an arbitral award in a construction-contract dispute. It left intact awards for performance-guarantee expenditure and unused casting-yard and mould expenses, but set aside the award for loss of overheads and profits because, according to a secondary case summary, the contractor had not proved the profits it would have earned.

What the court decided

In Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay v. M/s Nagarjuna Construction Company Limited, the Bombay High Court considered MCGM’s petition under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, challenging an arbitral award. The reported outcome was mixed: two expense awards survived, while the award for loss of overheads and profits was set aside.

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The available account is LawText’s secondary case summary, accessed 10 October 2026, rather than a verified copy of the full judgment. The reasoning below is therefore attributed to that summary; the underlying record and the court’s complete analysis cannot be established from it. LawText case summary

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Claim Amount awarded by the tribunal Reported treatment in the Section 34 challenge
Claim No. 1: performance-guarantee expenditure Rs. 1,35,880 The High Court left the award undisturbed; the summary describes the claim as a genuine expense not open to challenge under Section 34.
Claim No. 5: infructuous expenditure for a casting yard and moulds Rs. 1,36,421 The High Court left the award undisturbed; the summary describes the claim as a genuine expense not open to challenge under Section 34.
Claim No. 8: loss of overheads and profits Rs. 1,17,53,180 The High Court set this part aside. The summary says the contractor did not prove that it would have earned the claimed profits but for termination.

These are case-specific award amounts, not benchmarks for other construction disputes. The tribunal made the award on 24 March 2012 and corrected it on 12 September 2012.

How the dispute arose

The dispute concerned a construction contract dated 2 December 2004 for grade separators at Gadkari Chowk, Mumbai. According to the case summary, MCGM suspended the work on 26 February 2005, the suspension was not revoked, and the contract was later deemed terminated on 17 April 2008. MCGM filed its Section 34 challenge in 2013.

The court was S.C. Gupte, J., and the matter was Arbitration Petition No. 90 of 2013. The decision was dated 22 January 2019 and is reported as 2019:BHC-OS:2978 and 2019 LawText (BOM) (01) 185.

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Why the expenses survived but the profit award did not

Performance-guarantee and setup expenses

The summary reports that the court treated the performance-guarantee expenditure and the casting-yard and mould expenses as genuine claims and found no acceptable basis to disturb those parts of the tribunal’s award under Section 34. These claims concerned expenditure already incurred for the project, rather than anticipated earnings.

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Loss of overheads and profits

For Claim No. 8, the reported problem was proof: the contractor had not established that it would have earned the amount claimed but for termination. The summary characterizes the award as unsupported by evidence and contrary to the contract, and reports that the court set it aside. It does not identify the specific documents, testimony, calculations, or contractual clauses the court examined, so no more detailed account of the evidentiary record can be drawn from that source.

Best Value

What this decision does—and does not—show

  • It shows a partial result in this particular Section 34 challenge: two expense awards remained in place, while the loss-of-overheads-and-profits award did not.
  • The reported distinction is between substantiated expenditure and a claim for expected profit that the contractor had not proved on this record.
  • It does not establish that loss-of-profit damages are unavailable in every terminated construction contract. The result is tied to this contract and the evidence described in the case summary.
  • It is not a complete statement of the current Section 34 test or later case law. Readers assessing another dispute should consult the full judgment, the governing statute, and relevant subsequent authorities.

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