Former Supreme Court Justice L Nageswara Rao urged young lawyers not to be swayed by “doomsday narratives” about India’s arbitration landscape, stressing that the field was growing and offered immense opportunities.
“We keep hearing from our own leaders of the Bar that India is not doing well in arbitration, that India is doomed, that India is a disaster in arbitration. Please don’t believe all this...Arbitration is not going to die soon, it is not doomed.” Justice Rao said
He underlined that the very scale of participation at the Delhi Arbitration Weekend demonstrated the strength and future of arbitration in India.
“With the number of arbitrations that are coming up in India, and with the amount of interest that this event has generated in people from all over the world being here, that would show that arbitration is not going to die soon,” he remarked.
On Thursday, Senior Advocate Harish Salve, speaking at an event organised as a part of India ADR week, had said,
"In India arbitration is a disaster.You are lucky if you get it done quickly.”
Salve was blunt in his assessment of the current state of arbitration in India:
“The problem in India is not the law. The problem in India...is because Indian judges are over-interventionists.”
Justice Rao spoke at a session titled 2025 SIAC Rules: Charting a New Course in International Arbitration, part of the Delhi Arbitration Weekend. It was hosted by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC).
The session also featured Lucy Reed (President, SIAC), Ila Kapoor (Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co and Member, SIAC Court of Arbitration), Sudhanshu Swaroop KC (Barrister, Twenty Essex) and Prantap Kalra (General Counsel, JCB India).
Reed traced the drafting journey of the SIAC 2025 Rules, noting that more than 3,000 international cases filed under the 2016 rules informed the amendments. Of these, Indian parties accounted for over 2,400 matters, reflecting the country’s significant role in SIAC’s caseload.
She explained that the drafting process involved extensive consultation with users, arbitrators, in-house counsel, academics and government representatives across multiple jurisdictions, with India being a central focus.
Swaroop highlighted the innovation of protective preliminary orders, which can now be issued on an ex parte basis.
“That, as far as I’m aware, is unique to SIAC. It is genuinely an innovation that has not yet been reflected in other rules,” he observed.
He cautioned, however, that enforceability of such ex parte orders internationally remains unsettled and may face due process challenges.
Kapoor discussed new timelines for awards, noting that while the period for tribunals to issue awards was extended from 45 to 90 days, the rules now ensure greater predictability by requiring tribunals to declare a schedule within 30 days of the last submissions.
“SIAC is now promising that we should have an award from the tribunal within five to six months of the last hearing...It certainly increases certainty,” she said.
Kalra welcomed the early dismissal and preliminary determination provisions, stressing their importance for cost and time efficiency.
“This enables tribunals and parties to focus more on truly contentious issues rather than making everything under the sun part of the dispute...We now have wider grounds and a more predictable process,” he noted.