The Supreme Court on Friday refused to interfere with an order of a division bench of Delhi High Court that favoured SpiceJet in an arbitration dispute with the airline's former promoter Kalanithi Maran.

The division bench had set aside and remitted back for fresh consideration an order passed by a single judge of the high court which went in Maran's favour. The single judge had upheld the arbitral award asking SpiceJet and its promoter Ajay Singh to refund ₹579 crore plus interest to Maran.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud while expressing displeasure over the order passed by the single judge on July 31 last year requested the chief justice of Delhi High Court to allot the case to another single judge.

The bench said the single judge had failed to apply his mind to the case as was required under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and here merely wrote a voluminous 250-page judgment without dealing properly with the issue.

“We are in agreement with the reasoning of the division bench sending it back to a single judge for order again under section 34. Order has to be carefully articulated. On the other hand, the judge must apply mind to grounds of challenge and then deduce if interference is warranted Reading the single judge order it does not seem there is any application of mind,” the bench said.