On 6 September 2012, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court overruled Bhatia International and Venture Global and held that Part I of the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996 applies only to arbitrations seated in India. The judgment prospectively rewrote the boundary between domestic-court supervision and party-chosen foreign seats, aligned Indian law with the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention, and laid the analytical scaffolding on which Indus Mobile, BGS SGS Soma JV and PASL Wind Solutions were later built.
On 20 April 2021, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court resolved a long-running circuit split and held that two Indian-incorporated parties may validly choose a foreign seat of arbitration. The resulting award is a foreign award enforceable under Part II of the 1996 Act, not a domestic award; and the Indian parties retain access to Section 9 interim relief through the proviso to Section 2(2). The judgment treats party autonomy as the dominant principle of Indian arbitration, even where the analytic invites attention to public-policy and contract-law objections.