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The judgment reinforces the finality of foreign arbitral awards in India and provides greater certainty for investors and commercial parties, particularly in sectors such as energy, infrastructure and natural resources, by limiting enforcement-stage challenges based on public policy grounds.
In a Section 9 plea under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, the Court holds that the Heads of Terms constitutes a prima facie binding commercial arrangement warranting interim protection, leaving questions of enforceability and entitlement to specific performance to the arbitral tribunal.
by Vasanth Rajasekaran* and Harshvardhan Korada**
From the opacity of Bar Council rules on foreign lawyers to enforcement gaps and AI’s irreducibly human element, six practitioners discussed what it will take for the India-UK dispute resolution corridor to fulfil its potential.
A technical session at the ICA Conference on “Arbitrating Indo-UK Commercial Disputes” highlighted that while hybrid ADR frameworks are gaining traction, corporate users remain cautious about mediation’s role in high-value disputes, and arbitration, despite concerns of cost and complexity, continues to be the preferred mechanism for certainty and enforceability in Indo-UK commerce.
In 1774, Lord Mansfield observed that ‘in all mercantile transactions the great object should be certainty.’ Two hundred and fifty years later, Arun Chawla, Director General of ICA, used that same principle to frame the case for arbitration as the silent infrastructure of globalisation and for the India-UK economic partnership’s dependence on credible dispute resolution institutions.
If the AI systems driving arbitral decisions are trained on materials from other jurisdictions, the awards they generate may be unenforceable or worse, systematically biased. Sir Geoffrey Vos used his keynote at the ICA’s 4th Indo-UK Commercial Disputes Conference to draw a line between AI in arbitration, where party consent makes adoption feasible, and AI in courts, where constitutional legitimacy makes it impossible.
From Bitcoin loans worth pennies at issuance to claims that doubled in value before the award, leading practitioners at LIDW 2026 examined whether arbitration can deliver the speed, certainty and enforceability that the digital-asset sector demands and found that the answer depends entirely on how fast the mechanisms adapt.
From fabricated citations to autonomous AI agents, the arbitration community is confronting a new reality. At LIDW 2026, experts debated whether AI is a revolutionary tool for dispute resolution or a risk that demands greater human oversight.
At International Arbitration Day during LIDW26, leading practitioners, academics and judges examined due process challenges in arbitration, discussing public policy review, the Semenya litigation, corruption-based challenges, AI-assisted decision-making, expert evidence and judicial scrutiny of arbitral awards.
The evolving friction between EU law and international arbitration formed the core of discussions during the second session of Cyprus Arbitration Day 2026, with experts analysing the aftermath of Achmea, challenges to arbitral enforcement, and the increasing assertion of sovereignty and public policy concerns across jurisdictions.
“The Tribunal conducted a factual inquiry, relying on quality certificates, mill test reports, IGC test results, and inspection reports of the third-party agency, all of which confirmed that the tubes supplied by the respondent was in accordance with the requisite specifications. Once this was established, the burden shifted to the petitioner to prove defects.”
by Kunal Mimani* and Kartikey Bhatt**
This report contains the keynote address by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar as Chief Guest at the Colloquium organised by India International Arbitration Centre (IIAC) at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.
Chief Justice of India Dr. DY Chandrachud delivered a lecture on ‘Commercial Arbitration: Shared Understandings and Developments in UK And India’ ’ at the United Kingdom Supreme Court on 06-06-2024.
by Justice Hemant Gupta (Retd.)*
Cite as: 2024 SCC OnLine Blog Exp 28
Concluding that the principal contention raised by the petitioner regarding consolidation of claims arising out of nine separate contracts is devoid of substance, the Bombay High Court dismissed the petition refusing to interfere with the arbitral award.
by Swarnendu Chatterjee*and Sneha Rath**
By Nikhil Parakh* and Sejal Makkad**