India has time till mid-April to file an appeal against an international arbitration tribunal ordering it to repay the UK’s Cairn Energy Plc $1.2 billion-plus interest and cost, but the challenge can only be on limited grounds such as procedure not being followed.

The award from a three-member tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague invalidating India’s Rs 10,247-crore tax claim on Cairn Energy and ordering the government to return the value of shares it had sold, dividends seized and tax refunds withheld, was registered in the Netherlands on January 8, two people aware of the matter said.

The registration of the arbitration award was acknowledged by New Delhi on January 19, they said, adding an appeal against the award can be filed in 90-days of those two dates.

Under Dutch law, the grounds for setting aside an arbitral award are extremely narrow, tax experts said.

An arbitral award may only be set aside if the panel had not followed due process such as not giving enough opportunity to either side to present their case.

In the Cairn arbitration case, the tribunal, which constituted of one neutral judge and the other two being named by Cairn and India, concluded formal hearings and submissions in 2018 and allowed parties to make written counter-arguments for more than a year thereafter and for months studied claims and counterclaims before delivering the judgment on December 21, 2020.

They said the award, under Dutch law, can also be set aside on grounds of there being no valid arbitration agreement, rules for the composition to the tribunal not being observed, tribunal exceeding its mandate among others.