Arbitration in India cannot deliver on its promise of speed if hearings are being fixed three, four or five months apart, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said on Thursday, while calling for arbitrators’ calendars to be checked before they are appointed.
He said the purpose of arbitration was speed in dispute resolution, but crowded schedules of arbitrators were contributing to long gaps between hearings. He said he was impressed by an institutional model where an arbitrator’s calendar is sought before appointment.
“What happens is, in the absence of such a system in India, arbitrators are so busy that today there is an arbitration hearing; the next day to get this hearing will be after a few months, 3, 4, 5 months. That's the problem,” Mehta said.
SG Mehta was speaking during a fireside chat with Nish Shetty, Partner at Clifford Chance and Co-Chair of the Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration (MCIA), on what India needs to do to make its arbitration system more effective and attractive to parties. The chat was organised as a part of India ADR Week 2026.
Shetty asked what India needed to do to encourage parties from within and outside the country to have confidence that arbitrations in India would be conducted in a familiar and dependable manner.
"I was really impressed by one model - one of the institutional models where, before appointing an arbitrator, his calendar is asked for," SG said. "There is a request for the calendar. And if the institution feels that his calendar permits conclusion of the arbitration within the statutorily fixed time, then only is he appointed."
SG Mehta said India should consider adopting a similar mechanism.
“So we should incorporate institutional arbitration with a similar calendar appraisal system.”
SG Mehta also backed a greater shift towards institutional arbitration over ad hoc arbitration.
“If we concentrate more on institutional arbitration than individual arbitration, meaning that where the institution would choose the arbitrators and not the parties, then that might be a real boost in the arbitration.”
The discussion also touched upon the relatively small share of institutional arbitration in India.
Shetty pointed out that MCIA had crossed 200 matters in its first decade, while an estimated 50,000 ad hoc arbitrations were taking place in India at any given point. He asked what institutions such as MCIA could do to encourage greater adoption of institutional arbitration.
"The statistics are really frightening," SG Mehta said. "If this is the difference between institutional arbitration and individual arbitration, then something really needs to be done."
SG Mehta said there may not be a single ready-made solution to increase the adoption of institutional arbitration.
“Those who are really involved in arbitration will have to sit together, put their heads together and find a solution.”
He suggested that larger arbitral institutions could have different divisions depending on the monetary value of disputes, similar to the pecuniary jurisdiction system followed by courts.
SG Mehta also briefly addressed proposed amendments to India’s arbitration law. He added that the proposed amendments signalled India's seriousness about arbitration.
Shetty asked what was pushing arbitrations involving Indian disputes to seats such as Singapore and London, and what India could do to bring them back onshore. SG Mehta said those systems may inspire more confidence.
“Maybe those two systems are able to inspire more confidence.We will have to find out why our system is not inspiring confidence.Maybe there are some individual solutions or maybe systemic solutions. But definitely some systems in the world are more effective.”
He clarified that his preference for institutional arbitration was his personal view and did not necessarily represent the government’s position.