Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday gave a frank assessment of India’s arbitration landscape, warning that the country’s ambition to become a preferred global seat for arbitration will remain elusive unless it bridges the gap between legislative intent and institutional implementation.
Highlighting what he described as a “lack of credibility”, the CJI pointed out the continued unconstitutionality of the Arbitration Council of India (ACI), despite its establishment through the 2019 amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, and the much-awaited draft legislation proposing the next round of reforms.
“The Indian Arbitration Council was established under the Basic Law under the 2019 Amendment to Degree Institutions and Approved Arbitrators. After six years, it is yet to be constituted,” the CJI said while delivering the inaugural address at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Indian Institute of Arbitration and Mediation (IIAM) in New Delhi.
Referring to the draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, which was first circulated for public consultation in October 2024 based on the recommendations of the TK Viswanathan Committee and is now expected to be introduced in Parliament, Justice Kant said legislation alone cannot build confidence in India’s arbitration ecosystem.
He added: “If our ambition is to become the seat of choice, then this gap between announcement and implementation is precisely the credibility deficit that we cannot get out of with legislation.”
The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill seeks to deepen institutional arbitration by reducing judicial intervention, recognizing emergency arbitrations, simplifying timelines, clarifying the difference between seat and venue of arbitration, and introducing several procedural reforms based on the recommendations of the expert committee headed by former Law Minister Viswanathan. The Federal Ministry of Law had invited the public to comment on the draft in October 2024, and described the exercise as part of its efforts to strengthen institutional arbitration and improve the ease of doing business.
The CJI stressed that the reforms gain added urgency given the burden on the traditional justice delivery system. “Indian courts are currently hearing over five million (50 million) cases… No judicial model, however well resourced, is capable of resolving the large backlog of cases on its own. This volume has to be dealt with partly outside the courtroom, not as a matter of convenience, but as a matter of arithmetic,” Justice Kant said, stressing that online arbitration, mediation and dispute resolution have become indispensable complements to the judicial system rather than substitutes for it.
He also drew attention to India’s continued dependence on foreign arbitration institutions despite its growing trading economy. “There is a more uncomfortable statistic worth putting before this audience. In 2024 and 2025, Indian parties were the third largest foreign user of the Singapore Center for International Arbitration,” the judge noted.
Terming it as an issue of institutional credibility rather than a criticism of Singapore, the IJI observed that Indian companies continue to export their trade disputes to jurisdictions that have earned trust through decades of consistent institutional practice.
“In other words, we are among the world’s most zealous exporters of our own trade disputes to a seat we do not control, often governed by a law we did not write,” the ICJ said, adding that Singapore’s success depended on “decades of consistent practice, fairness and impartiality.”
Exposing what it described as the central challenge facing India’s arbitration ecosystem, the ICA asked: “What would it take for the next generation of Indian companies to choose Mumbai or Delhi with the same confidence they currently reserve for Singapore?”
He urged stakeholders to focus not on cataloging the shortcomings of Indian arbitration in the abstract, but on identifying concrete institutional reforms that would make “credibility, not habit or convenience,” the reason why parties choose India as the seat of arbitration.
