The Road Construction Department, Government of Jharkhand, filed a writ petition before the Jharkhand High Court challenging Procedural Order No. 30 passed by an Arbitral Tribunal, which had dismissed the Department's application under Section 16 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The core dispute was whether the seat of arbitration should be Delhi (as fixed by the Tribunal in its first Procedural Order dated 22.09.2023) or Ranchi (as indicated by the venue clause in the agreement, Clause 20.6(b)(iii), which specified the Conference Building at Mantralaya, Ranchi). The petitioner argued that since the agreement only fixed a venue and not a seat, the contractual venue at Ranchi should be treated as the seat, and the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to unilaterally fix Delhi as the seat. The respondent countered that the petitioner had acquiesced to the Delhi seat for over two and a half years, that the Delhi High Court had already upheld Delhi as the seat in a Section 29A extension proceeding, and that the challenge was barred by Section 4 of the Act and should properly be raised under Section 34 after the award. The judgment, as reproduced, sets out the competing arguments and the relevant legal framework under Section 20 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, but the final holding is not included in the text provided.