The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) organised the SIAC Annual India Conference 2026 held in New Delhi on 25 July 2026. The theme for this year’s conference was “International Arbitration: Navigating New Realities and Stress Testing the Fundamentals”. The highlight of the conference was the inauguration of the SIAC Delhi Liaison Office, which marks a significant milestone in SIAC’s global expansion and its growing engagement with India’s legal and business community.
Read more about the Delhi Liaison Office here: SIAC opens Delhi Liaison Office, strengthening engagement with India’s arbitration ecosystem
The inauguration ceremony was attended by several distinguished dignitaries, including Justice Surya Kant, Chief Justice of India; Edwin Tong SC, Singapore’s Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs; Arjun Ram Meghwal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Law & Justice and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India; Justice Tejas Karia, Judge, High Court of Delhi; R. Venkataramani, Attorney General for India and Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, Davinder Singh SC, Chairman, SIAC and Executive Chairman, Davinder Singh Chambers LLC, and Lucy Reed, President of the SIAC Court of Arbitration.
After the opening remarks by CEO SIAC Gloria Lim, Davinder Singh SC delivered insightful welcome remarks.
At the outset, he reflected on his lineage wherein his Indian forefathers travelled to Singapore and eventually settled there, which resulted in him never living in India. He reminisced on his visit to India in 1985 and how much India had changed since then, remarking that the transformation was remarkable.
“From our perspective in Singapore, when I say our, I mean those whose forefathers came from this great country [India], we have seen the unlocking of a potential which has revealed your true pedigree. We have seen the fashioning of a promise that India holds out, not only to its own people but to the world at large. We have seen, all in a short space of a decade or perhaps less, India’s achievements in math, science, and in other areas. Achievements which are recognized throughout the world. Those achievements embrace what India has done in the field of law.”
He reiterated that from an outsider perspective, India’s courts and the quality, depth, and profundity of its judgments are perceived positively. The Supreme Court’s judgments are followed closely for their intellectual rigor, and Singapore benefits greatly from this. He reasoned that judgments are on paper, but they truly are a conversation between the author of that judgment and the reader of that judgment. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who read that judgment. That conversation lifts us all up as readers because we better understand the thinking, rationalization, and the development of the law with integrity.
From SIAC’s perspective, Mr. Davinder remarked that in the last 15 years India has become a major player at SIAC- in terms of the number of cases, number of parties, use of innovative rules, and development of technology. He remarked that the technology used by Indian lawyers in SIAC international arbitrations is not only second to none but is increasingly looked to as a benchmark for others to learn from.
“The confidence, quality, and sophistication of the advocacy of Indian lawyers is a sight to behold… . All Indian lawyers should know that someone sitting outside India looks at India and compresses that observation into a few words, and they are: remarkable growth, extraordinary potential, and stunning achievement.”
Regarding the theme of the conference, he remarked that it was an important topic because in the rapid growth of international arbitration, the fundamentals are sometimes lost. These fundamentals and their relevance need to be questioned. He added that India was the country where one could seek inputs on these fundamental questions, innovate rules, and test whether these innovations would expedite the process and make international arbitration more efficient and less costly.
He recalled that, having grown up in Singapore with Indian parents who talked about their motherland, the conversations he heard were about India of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, but the appropriate word to describe India now would be “wow, what a journey”.
