Supreme Court Justice BV Nagarathna | Image credit: PTI

The priority appointment of women among the court-appointed arbitrators will go a long way in countering the criticism that arbitration is a male domain, said Justice BV Nagarathna, a judge of the Supreme Court of India.

In her inaugural address at the first edition of Bengaluru Alternative Dispute Resolution Week, she said that diversifying the pool of court-appointed arbitrators by including practitioners and industry experts and prioritising women arbitrators among them has the potential to bring about far-reaching changes in the Indian arbitration system, an alternative dispute resolution system.

Why is India lagging behind?

Justice Aravind Kumar of the Supreme Court, in his keynote address on the topic of ‘Broadening Horizons towards a World Class Arbitration Institution’, said that India is lagging behind in becoming a host of arbitration venues due to issues related to the legal and regulatory framework, cultural and structural barriers, perception issues and competition from established international arbitration centres.

Concerns about the neutrality, quality and efficiency of Indian arbitration institutions have deterred international parties from choosing India as their seat of arbitration, Justice Kumar said.

He stated that India, and Bengaluru in particular, has the potential to become a global arbitration centre if world-class arbitration jurisdictions are created by ironing out the existing deficiencies and with the commitment and cooperation of legal practitioners, politicians and businesses.

He also stressed that it was time to open arbitration halls in second and third tier cities as there was a high number of pending cases before the courts there.

All classes of parties involved in the process

Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court NV Anjaria said that while building a healthy arbitration system, care must be taken to ensure that this mechanism does not remain restricted to corporate and commercial sectors or remain an elite system of dispute resolution. It must cater to the needs of all types of litigants and hence the arbitration process must be made transparent, reliable, economical and honest, he said.

“It needs to be reformed into a process of jurisdiction, as even smaller and relatively poor groups of litigants should have the opportunity to resort to arbitration,” said Chief Justice Anjaria.