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Informist, Friday, Jun. 5, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Chief Justice of India Surya Kant Friday said that international arbitration has absorbed the habits of litigation that it was designed to avoid, including heavy pleadings, multiple procedural rounds, long hearings, and fee structures that many users find difficult to bear. Chief Justice Kant was speaking at the fourth edition of the International Conference on "Arbitrating Indo-UK Commercial Disputes: ADR as a Catalyst for Strengthening India-UK Economic Partnership" in London, UK.

 

"Arbitration was built to be the answer to the pathologies of formal litigation, and it is seemingly acquiring each of those very failings. In other words, the remedy has come to resemble the disease it was designed to cure," he said. 

 

Kant said arbitration agreements, unfortunately, were at times drafted with a level of complexity that rivals a legal treatise. Instead of providing certainty, they frequently contain ambiguous language, overlapping provisions, and imprecise formulation that leave critical questions unresolved, he said. The result is often a preliminary round of litigation devoted not to the merits of the dispute but to determining foundational questions, namely whether a valid arbitration agreement exists at all, which law governs it, where the jurisdictional seat is located, whether the chosen venue carries legal significance, and who possesses the jurisdiction to decide these issues, he said. By the time these threshold questions are resolved, parties may find themselves engaged in extensive litigation merely to establish that their dispute is, in fact, one that must proceed to arbitration, he added.

 

Noting the India-UK free trade agreement signed last year, Kant said that the economic partnership between the two countries cannot be strengthened by trade agreements, tariff schedules, and investment announcements alone. It also needs an alternative dispute resolution architecture that converts commercial confidence into day-to-day practice, and it is that apprehension of the structural failure that stands most directly between aspiration of the free trade agreement and the commercial reality it is meant to enable, he said. A corridor is not strengthened merely because goods, capital, and services are allowed to move across it; it is strengthened when those who use that corridor know that if something goes wrong, they will not be priced out, delayed out, forced into a process that has no real power to choose, he said. 

 

If countries' alternative dispute resolution mechanisms work only for disputes large enough to justify high fees or large legal teams, there is a risk of failing the entities that might fuel the commercial partnership that they are meant to support, said the chief justice. Real party autonomy, therefore, requires accessible model clauses, transparent costs, diverse panels, digital case management, and procedures proportionate to the value and urgency of the disputes, he said. In short, the autonomy that arbitration promises must be made genuinely usable for all parties to the corridor, not just the most powerful ones, he added.

 

Chief Justice Kant said that if arbitration becomes too expensive, too slow, too closed, or too formal for a party it is meant to serve, the institution must look within. Despite its many successes and millions of successful stories, international arbitration faces a few structural challenges, said Kant. This is because arbitration has increasingly come to be treated as a product to be promoted, rather than a mechanism to be refined, he said. Kant highlighted that a relatively small pool of repeat participants appears with frequency as arbitrators, counsel, and experts. It can create a strong perception that arbitration is distant and difficult for others to enter, he said.

 

The chief justice suggested steps to improve the arbitration institution between the two countries. A joint Indo-UK arbitrator accreditation and cross-training programme should build a shared pool of practitioners genuinely fluent in both ecosystems, he said. He also pushed for connection of arbitration with mediation through properly designed hybrid protocols. 

 

The event was convened for legal minds from India and the UK to explore the cross-border dispute resolution and strengthen legal and institutional cooperation. In a series of sessions, various speakers addressed issues focused on investor confidence, legal mobility, and evolving frameworks for the Indo-UK commercial dispute resolution.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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