Supreme Court Justice BV Nagarathna on Saturday said that India must widen its pool of arbitrators beyond a small circle of retired judges and marquee practitioners if it wants to be a credible seat of arbitration.
Speaking at Delhi Arbitration Week 2025, she called for greater diversity, stronger institutions and higher-quality awards to curb court interference.
“Arbitration cannot be the domain of retired judges or well-established names alone. Specialists in niche fields, including non-lawyers, must also be encouraged,” Justice Nagarathna said, adding that arbitration “continues to be a male-dominated field” and that barriers to appointing women arbitrators must be “swiftly addressed,” with clear pathways for younger women to access opportunities.
The judge was chairing a session titled Seats of the Future: Actionable steps for enhancing the Indian Arbitration Ecosystem. The session also featured Gujarat High Court Justice Nikhil S Kariel, DIFC Court judge Justice Michael Black KC, former Orissa High Court Chief Justice Dr S Muralidhar and Barrister at 3 Verulam Buildings David Quest KC.
Linking the quality of awards to the extent of judicial intervention, she noted that poorly reasoned or procedurally flawed awards invite challenges and delay finality.
“The quality of the arbitral award would ultimately have a bearing on the intervention being made by the courts. If the awards are of a high quality, automatically the intervention of the courts would be very, very less,” she observed.
She also mooted a formal code of conduct for arbitrators to reinforce ethics, independence and accountability.
On structure, Justice Nagarathna pressed for a decisive shift toward institutional arbitration.
“With institutional arbitration comes professional management, certainty of process, procedural fairness and shorter timelines,” she said, calling for greater support to institutions such as ICA, MCIA, IIAC and DIAC and for investment in infrastructure and awareness.
Justice Kariel mapped five structural bottlenecks: the dominance of ad-hoc arbitration; delays at every stage (appointments, pleadings, hearings and delivery of awards); execution bottlenecks because awards are enforced like civil decrees; overuse of constitutional writ supervision (Articles 226/227) in arbitral matters; and concerns over arbitral quality, including instances of poorly reasoned or even plagiarised awards.
“The frequent invocation of these powers creates the perception that in India, arbitration is never truly final,” he cautioned.
He urged institutionalisation (even mandating institutions for specified disputes), quality safeguards (eligibility standards, scrutiny of draft awards, disclosure of concurrent appointments) and a hands-off judicial approach. He said,
“Minimal interference does not mean abdication. It means respecting the autonomy of the parties."
The judge called for accelerated, phased procedures on the lines of expedited/streamlined tracks where awards issue in months, not years. He backed enforcement reform via specialised benches, statutory timelines, e-filing/digital tracking and deterrent costs for frivolous challenges.
Finally, he welcomed proposals in the 2024 Draft Arbitration Amendment Bill for a party-consented appellate tribunal.
Justice Black, drawing on nearly two decades of arbitrating in India, said that judges must see themselves as part of the arbitral architecture.
“The court of the seat is not an alternative to the arbitral process. It is part of the arbitral process…there to support arbitration, not to regard it as a competitor.”
He contrasted London’s experience, where the absolute number of successful challenges is miniscule, thanks to filtration. Further, he listed the practical advantages of institutional arbitration over the ad hoc variety: predictable costs, vetted panels, award scrutiny and accumulated institutional knowledge.
Quest KC flagged the surge of disputes around digital assets, blockchain, smart contracts and AI, noting that tech-native parties expect technologically fluent arbitrators and faster, less paper-heavy procedures. He pointed to the UK’s Digital Dispute Resolution Rules, which empower tribunals to design bespoke processes with timetables measured in days rather than months and appointing bodies maintaining rosters of qualified, tech-savvy arbitrators ready to act at short notice.