In January 2025 the Karnataka High Court rejected an application to return a vessel-recovery petition to the Commercial Court, holding that maritime claims under the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act 2017 belong to the High Court's admiralty side. A digest of the facts, the forum question, and the lex specialis reasoning.
In 1992 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that India's High Courts possess inherent, unlimited admiralty jurisdiction — not a power confined to obsolete colonial English statutes. A digest of the arrest of m.v. Elisabeth at Visakhapatnam, the source of that jurisdiction, and the road to the Admiralty Act, 2017.