Ahmedabad, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Saturday said that although the arbitration framework in India has largely matured, significant challenges remain in building trust, strengthening institutional capacity and developing a cohesive pool of qualified arbitration professionals.
Speaking after laying the foundation stone for the Gujarat High Court Arbitration Center in Ahmedabad, the IAC said India must measure itself against the standards of leading arbitration benches across the world and the legitimate expectations of parties who opt for arbitration in the hope of getting something better and faster from litigation.
He referred to Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel’s speech at the same event, where the Prime Minister highlighted the growing importance of institutional arbitration within India’s legal and judicial framework, especially for a state like Gujarat, which leads the nation in industrial development and technological advancement.
“I must admit that the arbitration framework in India has now largely matured. Legislative reforms to arbitration law have focused on minimal judicial intervention, time-bound procedures, and impartiality in appointments. In parallel, judicial rulings have strengthened party independence and clarified doctrinal doubts.”
However, the International Committee of Justice noted that progress does not remove existing challenges. He noted that institutional arbitration still occupies too little space, with a large volume of disputes still occurring through ad hoc mechanisms. Moreover, many institutional arbitration disputes continue to favor destinations outside India.
“The question we must face is not whether arbitration is viable, but rather the question is whether our institutional arbitration and our institutions aim to inspire enough confidence to become the most preferred choice and destination,” he said, citing challenges including building confidence, capacity and availability of trained professionals.
Addressing the first challenge – trust – CJI Surya Kant said that institutional arbitration only fulfills its promise when users truly trust it.
“Confidence in the impartiality of arbitrator appointments, confidence in procedural integrity, confidence in the implementation of awards – that trust is not built by rules on paper. Rather, it is built through consistent, transparent and demonstrably fair practice over time,” he said.
We must honestly ask whether our institutions have fully earned this trust, and what they must do to earn this trust, the CJI added.
The second challenge is capacity, he said.
“The number of institutional arbitrations in India remains disproportionately small compared to the volume of commercial disputes arising in the country. Many parties continue to default on ad hoc arbitration or courts because institutions have not sufficiently demonstrated the value they add,” the CJI added.
Leveraging institutional capacity in terms of infrastructure, internal arbitrators, case management systems and administrative efficiency “is not a matter of prestige; it is a matter of importance,” he said.
According to the CJI, the third challenge is the “professionalism challenge”, which appears to be the most challenging and important.
“Arbitration at its best is a specialized discipline. It requires not only legal fairness, but also case management skills, sensitivity to commercial realities, and an understanding of what is really at stake for the parties.
“India must invest seriously in training arbitrators and in developing a cohesive pool of qualified arbitration professionals,” he added.
Without this investment, he said, growth in the number of institutions would outpace growth in process quality.
The way forward, the CJI said, lies in institutional honesty – not in measuring ourselves where we start, but against where we should be: the standards of world-leading arbitration benches and the legitimate expectations of parties seeking an effective alternative to litigation.
The state-of-the-art building of the Gujarat High Court Arbitration Center consists of 16 arbitration conference rooms, seven mediation rooms and an online dispute resolution system that caters to the needs of international and domestic alternative dispute resolution.
GHAC also organized a two-day conference on the theme: Institutional Arbitration at the Crossroads: Challenges and the Way Forward, which brings together arbitrators, advocates and all other stakeholders to deliberate on key aspects of institutional arbitration.
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