The Supreme Court refused to interfere with a Calcutta High Court judgment that upheld a ₹14.49 crore arbitral award arising from a commercial dispute involving cricketer Sourav Ganguly and Percept Talent Management Ltd. Percept had challenged the High Court's decision, but the Supreme Court declined to entertain the petition, leaving the arbitral award intact. The case touches on the limited scope of judicial review of arbitral awards under Indian arbitration law.

This case sits at the intersection of sports management contracts and arbitration law — a combination increasingly tested in CLAT PG. The core legal principle at stake is the extremely narrow window through which courts may interfere with arbitral awards under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.

Under Section 34, a court may set aside an award only on specific grounds: incapacity of a party, invalidity of the arbitration agreement, denial of proper notice, the award going beyond the scope of submission, or the award conflicting with public policy of India. Section 37 provides a limited appellate remedy. The Supreme Court's refusal to entertain Percept's challenge reinforces the pro-arbitration stance Indian courts have consistently adopted post the 2015 and 2019 amendments to the Act.

The 'public policy' ground, narrowed by the Supreme Court in ONGC v. Saw Pipes (2003) and further refined in Associate Builders v. DDA (2015), means courts cannot re-examine the merits of a dispute just because they would have decided it differently. Patent illegality — apparent on the face of the award — is the only merits-based ground available for domestic awards, and even that is read restrictively.

For CLAT PG aspirants, the key doctrinal point is that arbitration finality is near-absolute: a party that loses an arbitration cannot use courts as a second attempt at the merits. The examiner routinely tests whether aspirants can identify which grounds legitimately trigger Section 34 interference and which do not.