India Can Become An International Arbitration Hub If Judiciary And Executive Work Together: Law Minister Kiren Rijiju

Union Law Minister, Kiren Rijiju on Sunday (19 February) said that India can also biome an international arbitration hub like Singapore, if the executive and the judiciary work towards achieving the same.

Rijiju mentioned that uniform rules as well as the backing of both judiciary and executive would be required to make India an international arbitration hub. Rijiju was attending the Delhi Arbitration Weekend organised by the Delhi International Arbitration Centre.

He said, "the Delhi International Arbitration Cenre has 6,373 cases listed for arbitration, and 4,900 cases were heard in 2022. We have to seize this opportunity. I feel it is essential to recall the success story of Singapore".

"Today anybody can reach Delhi from any part of the world. I do not think anybody finds India geographically distant. If Singapore can become an international arbitration hub, why cannot India? Nobody can stop India apart from the Indians," he added. 

Rijiju further stated "If India has to become a global hub of arbitration we have to sit with the international practice. Since majority prefers ad hoc arbitration, it becomes susceptible to judicial intervention".

He said that the country will have to be mindful of the time taken to resolve a dispute, which was estimated to be 1,145 days by a World Bank report.

He also emphsised that "without support from the judiciary, ease of doing business and ease of living will remain a distant dream".

Remarking on the importance of paperless courts, he added that the allocation for e-Courts in union budget has been done keeping that objective in mind.

"The aim is to encourage arbitration for smaller, contractual disputes especially where parties are small or medium-scale business owners," explained Rijiju.

With respect to the proposed mediation bill, he said that the draft bill was referred to the parliamentary committee and several inputs for amendments have been received.

Furthermore, he added, "we referred to huge amount of sources including a large pool of retired judges from the Supreme Court. But the suggestions by the committee also were very important, and when the [new] draft bill comes out it will be wonderful”.