supreme court – Sumit Rai

SC Decision in BCCI vs. Kochi Cricket: Much Ado About Nothing?

First published on LiveLaw

After many rounds of deliberations and at least two Law Commission Reports separated by more than a decade (Report 176 in 2001and Report 246 in 2014), the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 was finally amended on 23 October 2015 by way of an ordinance. The ordinance route was justified on grounds that the amendments were urgent to send the right message about Indian government’s intentions of making the necessary legal reforms for ease of doing business in India.

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Positive or double negative? A critique of Videocon Industries v Union of India

Published in International Arbitration Law Review [Int. A.L.R. 2011, 14(4), 138-143]

ABSTRACT: In Videocon v Union of India, the Supreme Court of India held that an express choice of a foreign law governing the arbitration agreement would amount to the exclusion of jurisdiction of Indian courts in cases of international commercial arbitration. While the decision has been widely welcomed as progressive, this article argues that the judgment is a setback to certain essential concepts of international arbitration. It also attempts to answer some selected questions with respect to the nature of plural arbitrations–an important issue in multiparty contract arbitration that has escaped attention. The article argues that the impact of Bhatia International ratio has created a set of authorities in the last decade in India, which has made the job of the legislature more complicated than if it had been corrected earlier.

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