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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Arbitration in India has become luxury litigation. Let retd judges go, hire a private institution

Private institutions are better placed to handle arbitration because their credibility depends on neutrality, speed, and procedural discipline. To be hired again, they must keep things moving.

Arbitration was once held up as the antidote to India’s clogged courts. Disputes could be settled outside with the help of a neutral third party. That promise is now wearing thin. Critics claim that it has become punishingly expensive, and the arbitration awards—the verdicts of dispute settlements—routinely end up before the courts. So, the process often feels less like an alternative to litigation than a costly prelude to it. 

The government increasingly appears to be backing out of it altogether, striking arbitration clauses from contracts in favour of a return to the very courts it once sought to avoid. While these concerns may be valid, to abandon arbitration on their strength without considering alternatives such as institutional arbitration would be premature.

The problem of costs and delays

Arbitration in India is slow and expensive. Take the case of Jaipur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd v HCL Infosystems Ltd. A three-member tribunal — one retired Supreme Court judge and two retired High Court judges — was paid about Rs 13 crore in seven years. The cause of such “luxury litigation”—as it has come to be called— rests in court-appointed, court-style, ad hoc tribunals, where retired judges can dominate both who gets appointed and what they are paid, with little institutional discipline over either. 

Prashant Narang and Vishnu........

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