Between Convergence And Consistency: Assessing India’s Arbitration Regime Through A Comparative Lens With Singapore And The United Kingdom In The Energy Sector
- IJLLR Journal
- Jan 17
- 1 min read
Brahmpreet Singh, O.P Jindal Global University
Part I
Introduction and Background
Arbitration has emerged as the main tool of settling transnational business disputes. Its legitimacy is based on party autonomy and enforceability, which are essential in energy and infrastructure contracts where investment and sovereign regulation overlap. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 of India was adopted to bring the local legislation into par with the UNCITRAL Model Law 1985 and the New York Convention 1958, which marked the beginning of the transition towards arbitration as opposed to litigation. The legislative framework of India reflects the international standards thirty years later, but the judicial practice still determines the status quo of international commercial arbitration.
This paper examines that status quo by conducting a comparative analysis of India, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Both comparators are examples of pro-arbitration systems: the International Arbitration Act 1994 of Singapore and the Arbitration Act 1996 of the UK institutionalise the philosophy of minimal curial intervention of the Model Law. The statutory design of India is more or less the same, yet the uniformity of judicial interpretation and application is unequal.
The question of the research is as follows: to what extent does the arbitration framework in India, despite its model based on the global standards, practice in accordance with the Singaporean and British models, especially in the case of energy and renewable-energy disputes?
