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At the India Digital ADR Summit 2026, arbitration professionals examined the steps required to position India as a competitive arbitration destination, including strengthening domestic confidence, promoting institutional arbitration, improving enforcement, developing specialised expertise and ensuring cost-efficient and time-bound dispute resolution.
Day 3, Session 1 of GHAC Arbitration Week 2026 brought together senior judges and jurists to examine what India’s arbitration framework should look like after three decades of legislative development, with the discussion focusing on judicial intervention, quality of arbitral awards, institutional arbitration, Section 11 appointments, Section 29A timelines, Section 34 challenges, consistency in Supreme Court jurisprudence and the need for greater professional and procedural discipline.
by Vasanth Rajasekaran* and Harshvardhan Korada**
“The issue with regard to the time barred claim is not to be gone into at the reference stage under Section 11 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 but can be seen only by the Arbitrator/Arbitration Tribunal at the relevant stage.”
by Vasanth Rajasekaran* and Harshvardhan Korada**
“Applying the ‘eye of the needle’ test, the Court has no hesitation in observing that the prima facie scrutiny of the facts of the present case, leads to a clear conclusion that there is not even a vestige of doubt that the claim is non-arbitrable.”
Even if it is presumed that signing an agreement with an arbitration clause can be regarded as submission of a (non-existent) dispute to arbitration, it will not follow that as a matter of law, since there will be no implied authority to execute such a contract. All these are issues that will pose mixed questions of fact and law and will relate to the substance of existence rather than the form of existence, i.e., a written agreement.
Supreme Court clarified that the limited jurisdiction of the referral Courts under Section 11 must not be misused by parties in order to force other parties to the arbitration agreement to participate in a time-consuming and costly arbitration process.
“Consequent on introduction of sub-Section 6(A) in Section 11, the Supreme Court has in several decisions held that the jurisdiction of the referral Court is now circumscribed.”
