The Supreme Court held that where an arbitration agreement names two possible seats or venues but also confers exclusive jurisdiction on a specific court, the exclusive-jurisdiction clause governs and forum non conveniens does not apply to displace the chosen court. A digest of the facts, the holding, and what it means for drafting arbitration clauses.
On 8 November 2024, a five-judge bench held that unilateral arbitrator-appointment clauses in public-private contracts violate Article 14, overruling CORE I (2020).
On 15 December 2016, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Madan B. Lokur, J. (authoring), R.K. Agrawal, J. and Dr D.Y. Chandrachud, J. — held that a two-tier arbitration clause, providing for first-tier arbitration in India and an appellate second-tier ICC arbitration in London, is valid and permissible under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. The bench resolved a decade-long impasse left by a 2006 two-judge split between Sinha J. and Tarun Chatterjee J., and reaffirmed party autonomy as the lodestar of the 1996 Act. A close reading of the bench, the contract, the doctrinal contribution on appellate arbitration, and the post-judgment arc through Centrotrade III (June 2020) which held the resulting foreign award enforceable under Part II.
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.