{"id":398956,"date":"2026-10-16T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T03:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scconline.com\/blog\/?p=398956"},"modified":"2026-10-15T18:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T12:46:53","slug":"post-award-section-9-relief-home-care-retail-npcc-ishvakoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scconline.com\/blog\/post\/2026\/10\/16\/post-award-section-9-relief-home-care-retail-npcc-ishvakoo\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting What?: Reconsidering the Subject-Matter of Arbitration After Home Care Retail and NPCC"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An analysis of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd. v. Haresh N. Sanghavi and NPCC Ltd. v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd., examining the scope of post-award relief under Section 9<\/a> of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996<\/a> and identifying the interests that may remain protectable during a pending Section 34 challenge.<\/p>\n

For years, Indian courts treated Section 9 relief after an arbitral award as available only to the party holding that award, a rule built on the idea that interim measures exist merely to safeguard the “fruits” of a successful reference. The Supreme Court’s decision in Home Care retail Marts (P) Ltd. v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/a> unsettled that assumption, holding that the statute speaks of the “subject matter of arbitration” and the “amount in dispute,” concepts wider than any single party’s enforceable claim, and that an unsuccessful party is not, on that basis alone, shut out of Section 9.1<\/sup><\/a> This piece asks the question the judgment leaves open: once an award exists, what precisely does that broader language protect? Working through the categories the Court itself gestured toward, revived contractual rights, preserved status quo, confidentiality, and severable portions of an award, the article turns to National Projects Construction Corpn. Ltd. v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/a>, decided weeks later, where the Court permitted an unsuccessful claimant to recover funds into court custody because a decisive issue had been left unaddressed in the award.2<\/sup><\/a> Reading the two rulings together, the piece proposes a practitioner-specific reality: relief should follow only where a specific, identifiable interest remains genuinely undetermined pending the Section 34 outcome.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/p>\n

Four months ago, the Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, deviated from a decade of settled practice on what a losing party in arbitration can still seek a court to protect. In Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/a>3<\/sup><\/a>, decided on 24 April 2026, the court held that a party with no enforceable award in its favour is not, for that reason alone, barred from seeking interim relief under Section 9<\/a><\/span>, Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996<\/a> (Arbitration Act). On 11 August 2026, in NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/a>4<\/sup><\/a>, the court reiterated and reapplied the earlier decision to uphold a High Court order requiring an award-holder to deposit Rs 3.5 crores in court pending a Section 34 challenge brought by the very party whose claims had been dismissed by the arbitrator. Read together, the two decisions confirm that “successful” and “unsuccessful” no longer settle who may approach a court under Section 9<\/a>. What they do not settle, however, is a logically prior question: Once an award exists, what exactly is Section 9<\/a> protecting?<\/p>\n

From “fruits of the award” to “subject-matter of arbitration”<\/p>\n

The older position came from the Bombay High Court’s 2013 decision in Dirk India (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Maharashtra State Electricity Generation Co. Ltd.<\/span><\/a>, which held that post-award relief under Section 9<\/a> exists to protect “through the measure, the fruits of a successful conclusion of the arbitral proceedings”, so that a party “whose claim has been rejected in the course of the arbitral proceedings cannot obviously have an arbitral award enforced”.5<\/sup><\/a> The Delhi High Court took the same view in Nussli Switzerland Ltd.<\/span> v. Organizing Committee Commonwealth Games<\/span><\/a>6<\/sup><\/a>, and the Supreme Court itself quoted the “fruits of the proceedings” language without disapproval in Hindustan Construction Co. Ltd.<\/span> v. Union of India<\/span><\/a>7<\/sup><\/a>. Based on the court’s analysis, the position came to be settled: Section 9<\/a>, after an award, was purely an enforcement aid as it stopped a debtor from making a creditor’s award worthless before execution, and did nothing else.<\/p>\n

Home Care Retail rejected that reading on textual grounds. Section 9(1)(ii<\/span>)<\/a>, Arbitration Act<\/a> does not speak of “fruits of arbitration” at all — it empowers a court to secure “the amount in dispute” or protect “the subject-matter of arbitration”, language the court described as “broader in scope, width and amplitude” than anything the fruits-of-the-award cases had assumed.8<\/sup><\/a> Manmohan, J., writing for the court, added that Sections 34 and 36 “provide remedies against an award or a stay thereof, whereas Section 9<\/a> ensures protection of the subject matter or the amount in dispute” — two different jobs, not one.9<\/sup><\/a> Denying a losing party any access to Section 9<\/a> would, on the court’s reasoning, leave it “remediless” precisely in the window where the award is under challenge and possibly wrong.10<\/sup><\/a> That correction answers who may apply. It leaves open what an applicant with no award in hand is actually asking the court to secure.<\/p>\n

What survives the award?<\/p>\n

Home Care Retail does not offer a definition of “subject-matter of arbitration” at the post-award stage. It offers examples, and the examples point in more than one direction. The court accepted that if a Section 34 court sets aside an award, “the underlying contract between the parties and their rights thereunder are revived”, and that Section 43(4) protects this by excluding the time spent in arbitration and in the Section 34 proceeding from any fresh limitation period.11<\/sup><\/a> Here the subject-matter is the contingent survival of the pre-award relationship itself.<\/p>\n

The court also gave the example of a party who had secured an order restraining invocation of a bank guarantee during the arbitration, an order that “ordinarily stands vacated” once the award is made. Where that party then obtains a stay of enforcement under Section 36(3), the court held, removing the earlier protection immediately “may result in irreversible prejudice” before the Section 34 challenge is even heard.12<\/sup><\/a> The subject-matter here is the status quo, not any substantive claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

A third example is narrower still: continuation of confidentiality over documents pending a Section 34 application — relief the court noted “did not in any manner prejudice or impede the rights of the successful party”, yet had been refused by the Dirk India<\/span><\/a>13<\/sup><\/a> line of cases.<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a> This has nothing to do with who wins; it is a free-standing interest that happens to survive the award.<\/span><\/p>\n

A fourth example concerns partial success. Where a party’s own claim succeeds in part but it is still labelled the “unsuccessful” side because a larger counterclaim goes against it, the court noted that a Section 34 court might later sever the counterclaim from the award, so the loss is not, in truth, final at all.<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a> Finally, the court flagged — without deciding — cases where an award is made without proper notice to a party, or where fraud or corruption is prima facie shown; there the interest being protected is the integrity of the process rather than any piece of the commercial dispute.<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Five distinct things, then, can survive an award: a revived contractual right, a preserved status quo, a standalone interest such as confidentiality, a severable and therefore still-open portion of the award, and a process-integrity concern going to how the award was made. Ishvakoo<\/span><\/a> adds a sixth, and it is the most practically useful of the lot.<\/p>\n

NPCC<\/span> v. Ishvakoo: A live application<\/p>\n

The facts are worth setting out because they show how far from the Dirk India<\/a> case<\/span>17<\/sup><\/a> picture a real post-award Section 9<\/a> case can travel. Ishvakoo had furnished bank guarantees worth Rs 3.5 crores against a mobilisation advance under a 2002 works contract with the National Projects Construction Corporation (NPCC). When a Section 9<\/a> petition was first filed in 2003, the Delhi High Court recorded NPCC’s undertaking to keep the guarantees alive through arbitration and any Section 34 proceeding, on the express condition that NPCC could encash them only if the arbitrator ultimately found that it was entitled to recover money from Ishvakoo<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>18<\/sup><\/a> Ishvakoo was unable to keep the guarantees alive after 2017, and NPCC encashed them that September, before the award was made.<\/span>19<\/sup><\/a> The arbitrator went on to dismiss Ishvakoo’s<\/span> claims in December 2017.<\/span>20<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

On a plain reading, that should have been the end of it: Ishvakoo lost, NPCC held the money, and the Dirk India<\/a> case<\/span> would have shut the door on any further protection. The Supreme Court found otherwise, for a set of reasons that map closely onto what survives the award. NPCC had filed no counterclaim before the arbitrator.<\/span>21<\/sup><\/a> The arbitrator, dealing with the issue of whether Ishvakoo was entitled to discharge of the guarantees, never actually decided it — the award recorded only that Ishvakoo was contractually bound to keep the guarantees alive and that its “fraudulent and collusive conduct” disentitled it to bank charges, without ever engaging with the 2005 order’s condition that encashment itself depended on a finding that NPCC was entitled to recover money.<\/span>22<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The arbitrator appears, on the Single Judge’s own reading of the award, to have been unaware that the guarantees had already been encashed by the time the award was written.<\/span>23<\/sup><\/a> And whether the award contained any finding that Ishvakoo had failed to utilise the mobilisation advance, the one fact that might have justified NPCC’s retention of the money, remained on the record before the Supreme Court, as a live question still to be finally resolved in the pending Section 34 proceeding.<\/span>24<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court treated this combination of no counterclaim, an issue framed but never actually decided, and money retained without any adjudicated basis for retaining it, as amounting to unjust enrichment if left uncorrected while the Section 34 challenge remained pending, and directed NPCC to deposit the Rs 3.5 crores in the High Court Registry rather than retain it outright.<\/span>25<\/sup><\/a> The court was careful to hold that this was a “rare and compelling case” meeting the higher threshold Home Care Retail had set for award debtors, not a relaxation of that threshold.<\/span>26<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

What Ishvakoo<\/span><\/a> actually protects, then, is neither a revived contractual right in the Home Care Retail case<\/a><\/span> sense, nor simple status quo, nor confidentiality. It is the practical value of an issue that was framed for decision but never in fact decided. Ishvakoo’s entitlement to the guarantee amount turned on a question the arbitrator did not resolve, and that non-resolution, not any error in what the arbitrator did decide, is what the Section 34 court will have to work through. Money sitting with NPCC on the strength of an issue nobody actually decided is a sixth category in its own right: unjust enrichment pending the resolution of an issue the award left open rather than closed.<\/p>\n

Section 9 during the Section 34 interregnum<\/p>\n

Both these decisions rest on a second premise that deserves equal attention: that a Section 34 court is not confined to upholding or setting aside an award sweepingly. Dirk India<\/a>’s<\/span>27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> “fruits of the award” logic worked only if the award, once made, settled the parties’ rights completely, leaving Section 34 as a mere waiting room. Home Care Retail treated that premise as no longer tenable, relying on the Constitution Bench’s ruling in Gayatri Balasamy<\/span> v. ISG Novasoft Technologies Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a> that a Section 34 court may sever “the<\/span> ‘<\/span>invalid’ portion from the ‘valid’ portion of the award”, correct clerical or computational errors, and modify post-award interest.<\/span><\/span>28<\/sup><\/a> Ishvakoo<\/span><\/a> illustrates precisely why this matters: The Issue 3 before the arbitrator concerning the discharge of the bank guarantees was, on the Single Judge’s finding, never actually addressed at all, which means the Section 34 court’s eventual ruling on that specific issue, not the arbitrator’s dismissal of Ishvakoo’s claims generally, is what will finally determine whether NPCC was entitled to the money.<\/span>29<\/sup><\/a> Until that ruling comes, the practical position of both parties remains genuinely open, and Section 9<\/a> is the only mechanism available to hold it there.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Practical reality<\/p>\n

Home Care Retail deliberately avoided laying down a checklist, preferring caution: the threshold for an award debtor “will be higher”; relief should follow only in “rare and compelling cases”; courts must proceed with “care, caution and circumspection”.<\/span>30<\/sup><\/a> The ordinary triple test — prima facie case, balance of convenience, and reasonable expedition, restated from Essar House (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Arcellor Mittal Nippon Steel (India) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a> continues to apply and was expressly reapplied in the Ishvakoo<\/a> case<\/span>.<\/span>31<\/sup><\/a> But the triple test does not by itself tell an applicant what to point to when the merits appear closed. Read together, the two judgments suggest an answer:<\/span><\/p>\n

Post-award Section 9<\/a> relief should be available to an award debtor where it can show a live legal interest capable of being affected by the outcome of the pending Section 34 proceeding, not an interest in relitigating the award, but an interest that the Section 34 court’s eventual ruling, on a specific and identifiable point, will determine one way or the other.<\/p>\n

Tested against Ishvakoo<\/a> case<\/span>, that formulation holds up. Ishvakoo was not asking the Section 9<\/a> court to revisit whether its claims should have succeeded; the arbitrator’s dismissal of those claims was not in question. It was pointing to a narrower and more concrete fact, as has been discussed, an issue framed for the arbitrator’s decision that the award, on its own terms, never resolved, and whose resolution now rests entirely with the Section 34 court. That is a live legal interest in exactly the sense the test requires — identifiable, distinct from the correctness of the award as a whole, and genuinely open until the Section 34 court rules. A party asking a Section 9<\/a> court simply to say the arbitrator was wrong would fail the test; Ishvako<\/a>o<\/span><\/span> did not, because the specific issue at stake had never actually been decided in the first place.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/p>\n

Home Care Retail’s contribution was to strip away a rule that had quietly conflated “subject-matter of arbitration” with the successful party’s enforceable claim. Ishvako<\/a>o<\/span><\/span><\/span> shows what that correction looks like on the ground: An award debtor recovering Rs 3.5 crores into court custody, not because it won the arbitration — it did not — but because a specific issue central to its liability was never actually adjudicated, and the money’s fate now depends on a ruling still to come. The two decisions, read together, leave practitioners with a workable, if narrow, principle: post-award Section 9<\/a> protects whatever remains genuinely undetermined pending the Section 34 court’s ruling, and nothing that the arbitrator has already, and actually, decided.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

*Arbitration lawyer, LexArbitri, Mumbai. Author can be reached at: vaishnaviagrawal347@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

1.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, ¶ 2 (India) (judgment dated Apr. 24, 2026).<\/p>\n

2.<\/a> National Projects Construction Corpn. Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, ¶¶ 17, 27 (India) (judgment dated Aug. 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

3.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

4.<\/a> 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

5.<\/a> 2013 SCC OnLine Bom 481<\/span><\/a>, para 14.<\/p>\n

6.<\/a> 2014 SCC OnLine Del 4834<\/span><\/a>, para 18.<\/p>\n

7.<\/a> (2020) 17 SCC 324<\/span><\/a> : (2021) 4 SCC (Civ) 373, paras 36—37.<\/p>\n

8.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 47.<\/p>\n

9.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghav<\/span><\/a>i<\/span><\/span>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 43.<\/p>\n

10.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

11.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, paras 5—6; Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996<\/a>, S. 43(4)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

12.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 49.<\/p>\n

13.<\/a> Dirk India (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Maharashtra State Electricity Generation Co. Ltd.<\/span><\/a>, 2013 SCC OnLine Bom 481<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

14.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 50 (discussing Wind World (India) Ltd.<\/span> v. Enercon GmbH<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2017 SCC OnLine Bom 1147<\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n

15.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 51.<\/p>\n

16.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 49.<\/p>\n

17.<\/a> Dirk India (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Maharashtra State Electricity Generation Co. Ltd.<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>2013 SCC OnLine Bom 481<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

18.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, para 5.<\/p>\n

19.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, para 7.<\/p>\n

20.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

21.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 9, 26(ii<\/span>).<\/p>\n

22.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 10, 13.<\/p>\n

23.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, para 13.<\/p>\n

24.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 13, 26(iv<\/span>).<\/p>\n

25.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 13 (Single Judge’s finding on unjust enrichment, extracted), 26(vi<\/span>), 27.<\/p>\n

26.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, para 26(vii<\/span>).<\/p>\n

27.<\/a> Dirk India (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Maharashtra State Electricity Generation Co. Ltd.<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>2013 SCC OnLine Bom 481<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

28.<\/a> Home Care Retail Marts (P) Ltd.<\/span> v. Haresh N. Sanghavi<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 670<\/span><\/a>, para 52 [discussing (2025) 7 SCC 1<\/span><\/a> (Constitution Bench)].<\/p>\n

29.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 13, 26(iii<\/span>)—(iv<\/span>).<\/p>\n

30.<\/a> NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>, paras 20—24, 26(viii<\/span>).<\/p>\n

31.<\/a> (2022) 20 SCC 178<\/span><\/a> : (2022) 235 Comp Cas 242, para 47; NPCC Ltd.<\/span> v. Ishvakoo (India) (P) Ltd.<\/span><\/span><\/a>, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1535<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Vaishnavi Agrawal*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67011,"featured_media":398957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42503,1191],"tags":[117263,75277,117264,117259,117260,117265,117258,117261,89668,117262],"class_list":["post-398956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-analysis","category-op-ed","tag-arbitral-award-interim-relief","tag-arbitration-law-india","tag-award-debtor-section-9","tag-home-care-retail-marts","tag-npcc-v-ishvakoo","tag-post-award-interim-measures","tag-post-award-section-9-relief","tag-section-34-arbitration-challenge","tag-section-9-arbitration-act","tag-subject-matter-of-arbitration"],"yoast_head":"\nPost-Award Section 9 Relief: Home Care Retail and NPCC | SCC Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An analysis of post-award Section 9 relief after Home Care Retail and NPCC v. 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