Novation Legal acts in domestic and institutional arbitration under SIAC, ICC, LCIA, DIAC and ad-hoc rules, before the Delhi High Court, the Bombay High Court (commercial division), the Supreme Court and foreign-seated tribunals. Our practice covers the full lifecycle — clause drafting, pre-arbitration negotiation, tribunal constitution, written submissions, hearing advocacy, and award enforcement under Sections 34, 36 and 47 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996.
Singapore (SIAC) and London (LCIA) lead Asian and global cross-border arbitration; Delhi (DIAC) and Mumbai (MCIA) are India's domestic equivalents; ICC arbitration travels everywhere. The choice of seat determines the supervisory court, set-aside grounds, enforcement framework and procedural ethos. We advise on seat selection at the contract drafting stage and conduct hearings at every major institution.
Foreign arbitral awards are enforceable in India under Part II of the Arbitration Act 1996, subject to limited grounds of refusal in Section 48. We have enforced foreign awards before the Delhi High Court, contested merits-review challenges at the enforcement stage and defended awards against Section 34 set-aside applications. Public policy challenges are tightly constrained post the 2015 Amendment and the Supreme Court's Renusagar narrowing.
Section 34 of the Act permits set-aside of domestic awards on a narrow set of grounds — patent illegality, public policy contravention, procedural fairness breach, capacity defect or scope excess. We draft Section 34 petitions where structural defects warrant, and far more often defend awards against attack. The 2015 and 2019 amendments have materially raised the bar for set-aside.
Choice of arbitrators, tribunal seat, language, applicable law, expedited or full procedure, document production rules and hearing schedule — these decisions in the first thirty days set the trajectory. We work with party-appointed arbitrators (or sole arbitrators where agreed), monitor tribunal communications for fairness, and challenge constitution where conflict or capacity issues arise.
Every matter is handled by a partner with end-to-end accountability. Book a confidential consultation in the strictest BCI compliance.