Institutionalization Of Arbitration In India: Building A Robust Ecosystem For Commercial Dispute Resolution
- IJLLR Journal
- 5 days ago
- 1 min read
Rehan Pande, Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur
ABSTRACT
For nearly three decades, India’s arbitration regime has promised speed and finality, yet it has often reproduced the very delay and judicial entanglement it was designed to avoid. This paper surveys the legislative and institutional project to transform Indian arbitration from an ad hoc, court-dependent model into a truly institutional one, in which specialized centers, rather than individual arbitrators and overburdened courts, administer the process from appointment to award. It follows this project from the Justice B.N. Srikrishna High-Level Committee Report of 2017 through the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Acts of 2019 and 2021, the creation of the India International Arbitration Centre, the still-to-be-formed Arbitration Council of India, to the Draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024. With validated institutional the paper argues, based on empirical institutional data, such as the growth in the caseload of the Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration and India’s historically poor performance on the World Bank’s now-discontinued enforcing contracts indicator, that legislative intent has consistently outpaced institutional delivery, and that India’s ambition to become a global arbitration seat is less a function of further statutory amendment and more a function of building durable, independent, and well-resourced institutions that commercial parties would actually choose to use. The paper ends with recommendations on sequencing reform so that regulatory architecture, institutional capacity and judicial support evolve in tandem rather than isolation.
Keywords: Institutional Arbitration, Arbitration Council of India, Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration, Arbitration and Conciliation Act, Commercial Dispute Resolution, India as an Arbitration Seat
