Striking at the root: The evolving legal landscape of anti-arbitration injunctions in India

The jurisprudence surrounding anti-arbitration injunctions in India has long oscillated between two competing legal poles. First is the principle of ‘kompetenz-kompetenz’, which dictates that arbitral tribunals must determine their own jurisdiction, and second is the inherent power of civil courts to prevent the abuse of legal processes. While the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Act”) is modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law to minimize judicial intervention, Indian courts have carved out a narrow yet potent exception for cases where arbitral proceedings are deemed “vexatious,” “oppressive,” or “inequitable.”

The recent judgment of the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in MSA Global LLC (Oman) v. Engineering Projects (India) Limited, FAO(OS) 88/2025, decided on December 12, 2025, provides a critical opportunity to examine this legal position. By upholding an anti-arbitration injunction against an ongoing ICC arbitration, the Court has reinforced the “purity of the arbitral process” as a ground for judicial intervention, while synthesizing a decade of complex case law.

Any analysis of anti-arbitration injunctions in India must begin with the Supreme Court’s decision in Kvaerner Cementation India Ltd. v. Bajranglal Agarwal (2012) 5 SCC 214. In this ruling, the Supreme Court held that a civil court lacks the jurisdiction to enjoin arbitral proceedings. Relying on Section 16 of the Act, the Court ruled that the arbitral tribunal is the sole authority to rule on its own jurisdiction, including objections regarding the existence or validity of the arbitration agreement. For years, Kvaerner was interpreted as an absolute bar, effectively shutting the doors of civil courts to parties seeking to stop defective arbitrations before they resulted in an award.

The absolute bar of Kvaerner began to erode as courts recognized scenarios where forcing a party to arbitrate would be fundamentally unjust. In McDonald’s India Pvt. Ltd. v. Vikram Bakshi (2016) SCC OnLine Del 3949, the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court clarified the position. While it vacated the injunction in that specific case, it established the legal principle that courts do retain the jurisdiction to grant anti-arbitration injunctions in “rare and exceptional” cases. The Court held that such power is derived from the inherent jurisdiction of civil courts and Section 45 of the Act, applicable where the arbitration agreement is “null and void, inoperative or incapable of being performed.”

This reasoning was further refined in Himachal Sorang Power Pvt. Ltd. v. NCC Infrastructure Holdings Ltd. (2019) SCC OnLine Del 7575. Here, the Delhi High Court distinguished between “anti-suit” and “anti-arbitration” injunctions. It held that the parameters for granting an anti-arbitration injunction are stricter. The Court laid down that an injunction should not be granted merely because the arbitration might be futile. Rather, the proceedings must be shown to be “vexatious” or “oppressive”, terms of art implying that the proceedings are an abuse of the legal process or cause demonstrable injustice.

The debate reached a fever pitch in Bina Modi v. Lalit Modi (2020) SCC OnLine Del 1678. Initially, a single judge of the Delhi High Court, relying heavily on Kvaerner, held that anti-arbitration suits were not maintainable. However, the Division Bench subsequently stayed the arbitration proceedings, and the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the Special Leave Petition against that order effectively signalled that such suits are maintainable, if the high threshold of “oppression” is met. Similarly, the Calcutta High Court in Balasore Alloys Ltd. v. Medima LLC (2020) SCC OnLine Cal 1699, held that Indian courts have the power to enjoin foreign-seated arbitrations, provided the petitioner can prove that the forum is non-conveniens or the proceedings are oppressive.

The MSA Global judgment synthesizes these precedents and applies them to a scenario involving arbitrator bias. The dispute involved a sub-contract for a project in Oman between Engineering Projects India Ltd. (EPI) and MSA Global LLC. The arbitration clause vested exclusive jurisdiction in the courts at New Delhi, but left the “place” of arbitration to be mutually agreed, failing which the ICC fixed Singapore.

The controversy arose when EPI discovered that the co-arbitrator nominated by MSA Global had failed to disclose a prior professional engagement with the same defendant. Despite a challenge, the ICC Court allowed the arbitrator to continue. EPI subsequently filed a suit in the Delhi High Court, which granted an anti-arbitration injunction.

A critical legal determination in MSA Global was the identification of the juridical seat. Under the law laid down in BALCO v. Kaiser Aluminium (2012) 9 SCC 552, Indian courts generally lack supervisory jurisdiction over foreign-seated arbitrations, since Part I of the Act does not apply. The Court in MSA Global applied the “Shashoua principle” as affirmed by the Supreme Court in BGS SGS Soma JV v. NHPC Ltd. (2020) 4 SCC 234 and Mankastu Impex Pvt. Ltd. v. Airvisual Ltd. (2020) 5 SCC 399. This principle posits that the designation of a venue (Singapore) typically implies the seat, unless there are “significant contrary indicia”. The Court held that the parties’ express choice to vest exclusive jurisdiction in the courts at New Delhi constituted such “significant contrary indicia”, thereby displacing the presumption that the ICC-fixed venue was the seat. Consequently, the Court ruled that New Delhi was the juridical seat and Singapore was merely a venue. This finding was pivotal; by establishing the seat in India, the Court asserted its supervisory jurisdiction under Part I of the Act.

Having established the jurisdiction, the Court examined whether the proceedings were “vexatious”. The core issue was the arbitrator’s non-disclosure. Section 12 of the Act, read with the Fifth and Seventh Schedules (introduced by the 2015 Amendment), imposes a mandatory and continuous duty of disclosure. The Court found that the arbitrator’s failure to disclose, justified by the arbitrator on the grounds that disclosure might lead to a challenge, was a deliberate concealment. The judgment posits that forcing a party to participate in an arbitration before a tribunal whose neutrality is reasonably doubted constitutes “oppression”. This expands the legal understanding of “vexatious proceedings” beyond mere jurisdictional overlaps to include the integrity of the tribunal itself.

A unique legal dimension of MSA Global was the conflict with the Singapore High Court, which had issued an anti-suit injunction restraining EPI from pursuing the Indian suit. The Division Bench held that since India was the juridical seat, the Singapore courts (acting as the courts of the venue) lacked the subject-matter competence to restrain the proceedings in the seat court. This reaffirms the primacy of the seat court in the hierarchy of international arbitration.

The legal position on anti-arbitration injunctions in India can be summarized into four key principles.

• First, as affirmed in cases like Bina Modi and McDonald’s, suits seeking anti-arbitration injunctions are maintainable, despite the general pro-arbitration stance of the Act.

• Second, for Indian courts to intervene, the juridical seat of arbitration must usually be in India, as per BALCO. Determining this seat involves a rigorous analysis of the arbitration clause to identify any “significant contrary indicia” that might override a foreign venue designation, following the BGS SGS Soma precedent.

• Third, the applicant must satisfy a stringent factual test by demonstrating that the arbitration is null, void, inoperative, or that its continuation would be “vexatious” or “oppressive”, as established in Himachal Sorang.

• Finally, as illustrated by the MSA Global judgment, egregious non-disclosure by an arbitrator that raises justifiable doubts as to independence can satisfy this high threshold for oppression, thereby warranting an injunction even before the final award is rendered.

Most importantly, the applicant must satisfy a stringent factual test. The courts must interfere if the arbitration is shown to be ex facie oppressive, vexatious, or inequitable, as was the case with the egregious non-disclosure in MSA Global. However, absent such a manifest defect that strikes at the root of the arbitral process, the courts must not interfere, respecting the general principle of arbitral autonomy.

The MSA Global judgment serves as a stark reminder that while Indian courts respect the autonomy of the arbitral process, that autonomy is predicated on the fairness and integrity of the tribunal itself.

About the author: Saurabh Seth is an independent counsel and arbitrator based out of New Delhi. He regularly practices in the Delhi High Court and heads the Chambers of Saurabh Seth.

The author would like to thank Sumeera Seth, Neelam Deol, Sumer Dev Seth, Abhiroop Rathore, Kabir Dev, and Sukhvir Singh – counsel at Chambers of Saurabh Seth for their inputs and research.

The views expressed by the author are personal.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s). The opinions presented do not necessarily reflect the views of Bar & Bench.

If you would like your Deals, Columns, Press Releases to be published on Bar & Bench, please fill in the form available here.