About the Book

The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 was passed in the year 1996 to facilitate and legitimize the arbitral awards. Limited grounds of appeals were made available to secure the commercial interests of the parties but this law still seems to oscillate between two schools of thought. While one advocates least judicial interference and complete party autonomy, the other, argues for necessary intervention in the event of miscarriage of justice. Similarly, arbitrability of issues remains a contestation despite periodic expositions by the courts.

The jurisprudence in arbitration is thus still trying to fix grey areas of ambiguity as the nature of commerce, technology and disputes keep evolving.

In addition to arbitration, mediation and conciliation have also emerged as robust mechanisms of out of the court settlement. With the enactment of The Mediation Act, 2023 and signing of the Singapore Mediation Convention, 2019 the practice of mediation has also got the authority that it lacked before. Now the parties can resolve their dispute through a neutral third party and get it enforced in the same manner as a judgment or decree of the court is enforced. Interestingly, The Mediation Act specifically allows the online mediation, formally opening the doors for technology to enter into the dispute settlement regime.

Both regimes, arbitration on one hand and mediation on the other, are also set to enter into formal institutional phase with the establishment of statutory regulatory/governing bodies such as the Mediation Council and Arbitration Council of India respectively. While this will go a long way in standardizing the ADR practice, the benefits of ad-hoc procedures should remain available to the beneficiaries.

With these developments in the background, the book includes following themes

1. Challenges to the award or settlement Confidentiality and transparency
2. Critical perspectives on institutional and ad-hoc mechanisms
3. Data protection and use of technology Enforceability of foreign awards Cross-border disputes
4. Issues related to specialized areas of law: intellectual property, investor-state relations, environment, industrial disputes etc.
5. Making India the hub of ADR Raising standards of arbitration and mediation in India
6. Scope of judicial intervention
7. Pre-institution and compulsory mediation
8. Best practices in arbitration and mediation: Case studies
9. LokAdalats and judicial settlement