The India–UAE commercial corridor is one of the most consequential bilateral economic relationships in the world. It moves at scale, in both directions, across sectors. And when the deals in that corridor go wrong, which they do, regularly and expensively, Indian parties keep discovering the same thing: the enforcement tools they needed were left unused, the arbitrators who should have been shaping panels were absent, and a statutory notification India should have issued years ago still has not been issued.

In this ‘Leading Questions’ section, Tariq Khan talks about the cases, the enforcement architecture, what Dubai Law No. 2 of 2025 actually changes, the Section 44 problem India has still not fixed and why the window of first-mover advantage for Indian lawyers in these courts is open right now but will not stay open for long.

Question: You built this practice in a jurisdiction most Indian lawyers have not entered. How did that happen — and what drew you specifically to the India–UAE corridor?

Answer: It started with something I kept noticing. Indian investment in the UAE has grown enormously infrastructure, real estate, technology, financial services, trade. The volume of deals crossing that corridor is significant and growing every year. Yet when I looked at representation before the DIFC and ADGM Courts, there was a striking mismatch.

What struck me equally was where sophisticated Indian practitioners were directing their attention. The focus tended to be on London, Singapore, and Paris the established hubs. Those are excellent jurisdictions, and I understand why they attract attention. But I kept looking at the DIFC Courts and thinking: this institution is operating at a level of commercial sophistication that is second to none. The quality of the judiciary. The speed of the proceedings. The depth of common law jurisprudence being developed in real time. This is not a secondary forum. It is a genuinely world-class court system, and it was not getting the attention from Indian practitioners that it deserved.

UAE also has something genuinely rare: a complete and diverse arbitration ecosystem. DIAC, the DIFC Courts, the ADGM Courts, and Arbitrate AD operate as parts of a coherent whole. The practitioner community is deeply international dozens of nationalities, counsel from every major common law tradition, a practice that is almost entirely cross-border. Unlike India, where the overwhelming majority of arbitrations are domestic, the UAE is built around international disputes. Everything is international. That changes how you think, how you argue, and what you have to know to be effective.

There was a real gap between the scale of the India–UAE commercial relationship and the quality of Indian representation in these courts. I wanted to help close it. That is the honest answer. Everything else followed from that.

Question: Tell us about Dubai Law No. 2 of 2025 — what it changes, what it means for parties in the India–UAE corridor, and what the DIFC Courts offer that parties consistently fail to appreciate until they are already in a dispute.

Answer: Dubai Law No. 2 of 2025 is a significant development, and every party with UAE commercial exposure should understand it. It consolidates and strengthens the legislative foundation of the DIFC Courts clarifying jurisdictional scope, refining the conduit mechanism that allows DIFC judgments to be executed in the onshore Dubai courts, and providing greater certainty around the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards within the DIFC framework.

The conduit jurisdiction is the piece most parties discover too late. The UAE does not operate as a single unified legal system for enforcement purposes. There is an onshore civil court system, and there is the common law system of the DIFC Courts. The critical point is that these two systems are connected by a gateway. An award or judgment recognised by the DIFC Courts can travel onshore and be executed as a DIFC judgment in the Dubai courts where the assets actually sit. Dubai Law No. 2 of 2025 has made that pathway more robust and more predictable. For any party seeking to enforce against assets in Dubai, understanding this architecture is not optional, it is the starting point.

What the DIFC Courts offer that parties consistently underestimate until they are inside a dispute is speed, sophistication, and a willingness to act. The Court issues injunctions and worldwide freezing orders in support of arbitration proceedings without hesitation when the facts warrant it. When a party faces dissipation of assets or a counterpart breaching an arbitration clause by racing to a different forum, the DIFC Courts move at commercial speed. That is not a small thing. In high-value disputes, the difference between a court that acts in 24 to 48 hours and one that takes weeks can be the difference between an enforceable award and an empty one.

There is another feature that deserves more attention than it receives. Costs follow the event in the DIFC Courts, and indemnity costs are genuinely available and genuinely imposed. In India, indemnity costs orders in arbitration-related proceedings are relatively rare. The absence of that deterrent has consequences, it makes frivolous challenges to arbitral awards cheaper to mount, which means more of them get mounted. In the DIFC Courts, a party that brings a meritless challenge to an award knows it may face indemnity costs. That is a real deterrent, and it keeps the proceedings materially cleaner.

Question: Walk us through the enforcement architecture and the Section 44 problem on the Indian side. You have been raising this for years. What would fixing it actually signal?

Answer: Most Indian parties do not understand the enforcement architecture of the UAE until they are already inside a dispute and by then, the discovery is costly. UAE-seated arbitral awards cannot at present be directly enforced in India as foreign awards under Part II of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. The UAE has not been notified under Section 44 of the Act as a reciprocating territory for the purposes of the New York Convention.

I want people to sit with what that actually means in practice. You go through years of arbitration. You pay significant legal fees. You build your case meticulously. You obtain an award that any court in the world would recognise as valid and enforceable. And then you discover that the most direct route to enforcement in India is closed not because the case was weak, not because the award is defective, but because a notification has not been issued.

A workaround exists through a two-step route under the Code of Civil Procedure. But a creditor should not be required to pay additional years of fees and navigate a two-stage process simply because an administrative notification remains outstanding. And here is what deserves to be said plainly: debtors know this. Some of them are counting on it. The goal should be for India to be seen as a jurisdiction that facilitates the enforcement of international arbitral awards not one that creates structural friction around it. That notification is long overdue, and issuing it would send an unambiguous signal to the international arbitration community that India means what it says about being a serious player in this space.

Question: Walk us through the cases that shaped your thinking — not just as results, but as moments that changed how you see advocacy or the law.

Answer: Let me take four cases and try to explain what each one actually involved, rather than simply what was decided.

The anti-suit injunction

I acted as lead counsel for an Indian entity. The counterpart had filed urgent proceedings before the Abu Dhabi Courts in clear and deliberate breach of a DIFC-seated arbitration clause. We applied for an anti-suit injunction. The real tension in that application was timing, we had a strong case on paper, but the Abu Dhabi proceedings were already moving and every hour mattered. Then, mid-application, the respondent filed amended pleadings and argued that those amendments had retrospectively cured the breach of the arbitration agreement. I remember thinking: this is either a genuinely clever pivot or a sign they have no answer on the merits. It was the latter. Cosmetic amendments filed after an anti-suit application cannot cure an existing breach. The Court rejected the argument entirely. The injunction was granted within 48 hours of instructions. The Abu Dhabi proceedings were restrained. Our client received its costs in full.

The lesson: when a counterpart breaches an arbitration clause, move immediately. Every day you delay is a day the other side uses to entrench itself in the wrong forum.

The ex parte injunction

This was an application to preserve the operations of a major commercial facility facing immediate shutdown. We received instructions in the evening. We worked through the night. We appeared before the DIFC Courts the following morning. I argued three propositions: the arbitration clause is separable from the main contract and its validity must be assessed independently; choosing a DIFC seat constitutes a submission to the exclusive supervisory jurisdiction of the DIFC Courts; and absent an express contrary choice, the law of the seat governs the arbitration agreement. The Court accepted all three. The Chief Justice dismissed the respondent’s appeal and upheld jurisdiction. The injunction was granted within 18 hours of receiving instructions.

What that case confirmed is something I have believed ever since: the quality of your preparation in the hours nobody sees determines what happens in the hours everyone does.

The post-award worldwide freezing order

This followed a foreign arbitral award exceeding USD 600 million. The central question was whether Article 15(4) of the DIFC Courts Law extended to post-award scenarios. The opposing party argued it could not that the DIFC Courts’ supervisory jurisdiction terminated when the award was issued. I argued that the provision must be read to cover the full lifecycle of the arbitral process. The Court accepted that. That point now matters enormously for any party facing dissipation risk during the enforcement window. It is one of those cases where the legal question sounds technical but the commercial stakes are existential.

The lesson: in developing jurisdictions, the absence of precedent does not diminish counsel's responsibility, it heightens it. Practitioners must prepare as active contributors to an evolving jurisprudence, not merely as advocates for a particular outcome.

The committal application

We had obtained an anti-suit injunction. The defendants, notwithstanding that injunction and a subsequent order, continued to pursue parallel proceedings in Abu Dhabi Courts. I argued three propositions: that court orders must be obeyed unless and until set aside; that continuing foreign proceedings in defiance of an anti-suit injunction constitutes serious interference with the administration of justice; and that deliberate attempts to circumvent the Court’s orders justify sanctions. The Court accepted the case in full. The defendants were found to have committed contempt in six separate respects. Each respondent was fined USD 75,000.

What that case confirmed is simple: courts with genuine institutional authority will use it. When the DIFC Courts say something, they mean it.

Question: There is a persistent tendency in international arbitration circles to criticise the Indian arbitration landscape. You work across both systems. What is your honest assessment and what would you say directly to the Indian lawyers and arbitrators who are wondering whether this market is for them?

Answer: My honest view is that the criticism is, at times, well-founded and at times reflexive. Both deserve to be acknowledged.

I have spent enough time in international arbitration forums to recognise the contours of that conversation. It is sometimes incomplete and occasionally unfair. No system is perfect. Every jurisdiction, every institution, every legal tradition carries its own inefficiencies and inconsistencies. Leading commercial courts have had their share of delay and procedural complexity. Prominent arbitral institutions have been criticised fairly, in some cases for cost and time. Criticising Indian arbitration while holding other systems to a different standard of scrutiny is not analysis. It is habit.

Here is what the conversation consistently undervalues. There are Indian judges whose written judgments are genuine sources of law on complex commercial and arbitration questions, read and cited across the common law world as authoritative treatments of difficult issues. There are Indian lawyers of exceptional ability who remain underrepresented on the international arbitration circuit, not for want of capability, but for want of visibility within that circuit. At their best, Indian law students and young practitioners possess an analytical depth that rivals the finest legal minds anywhere in the world. I have seen it in cases I have worked on with Indian co-counsel. I have seen it in the quality of advocacy Indian practitioners bring before common law courts.

That said, some of the criticism is legitimate. There have been legislative amendments that created uncertainty and judicial decisions that moved in directions sophisticated international parties found difficult to predict or accept. Those headwinds deserve to be named honestly, not dismissed defensively. But the honest conversation acknowledges both directions: the progress and the setbacks, the strong jurisprudence and the problematic decisions. The complete picture is more nuanced and more interesting than the one that tends to circulate on conference panels.

India has come a long way. That deserves acknowledgement clearly, and without the qualified praise that sounds like condescension dressed as diplomacy. But critique without direction is incomplete. So let me say something directly to the Indian lawyers and arbitrators reading this.

Attending conferences is not enough. Networking is not enough. Visibility is not enough. I am not dismissing these things, they matter and being present in the community, attending the regional arbitration weeks, engaging with institutions, being known to the people who instruct and appoint: all of that is part of building a practice. But it is only a part. The foundation has to be reported judgments and contribution to the ever-evolving jurisprudence. Thought leadership that comes from having actually argued difficult cases, won some of them, lost some of them, and understood precisely why. This jurisidction is for you. The barriers are lower than the perception suggests. Most arbitrations are in English. Most hearings are virtual. Register with DIAC and Arbitrate AD. Register with the DIFC and ADGM Courts as a practitioner. Understand the Rules properly, not superficially. Make yourself known to the institutions before you need them. And if you want to sit as an arbitrator not just appear as counsel, start now. Apply to the institutional rosters. Publish. Take appointments as secretary to the tribunal. Build the record that appointments follow.

The DIFC and ADGM Courts value the best common law minds, and India has some of the finest common law minds in the world. When I look at the arbitrators sitting in UAE-related disputes, I see practitioners from across the common law tradition. I do not see nearly enough Indian names. That is not a reflection of capability. It is a reflection of presence and presence is a choice.

The DIFC and ADGM Courts are not the future of Indian legal practice in the UAE. They are the present. The lawyers and arbitrators who claim this ground in this generation will define what Indian participation in these courts looks like for the next one.

It is not the conference appearance that builds a practice. It is the thing you read at eleven on a Sunday night that nobody asked you to read.

The talent is there. It has always been there. The question is whether it shows up in the rooms where decisions are made, on the panels where awards are issued, in the journals where the arguments are refined. That showing up is a choice. It is available right now. I hope more people make it.

Tariq Khan is Partner and Head of International Disputes at M&Co Legal. He advises on international arbitration, DIFC and ADGM Court proceedings, and cross-border commercial disputes

Views are personal.