Judicial Interpretation Of 2015 Amendments To Indian Arbitration & Conciliation Act

2015 amendment to Arbitration & Conciliation Act ("Act") brought about serious overhaul to the justice delivery system through arbitration. Indian Courts have interpreted the amendments in the same spirit and have brought about clarity to the objective of the amendments. This Article focuses on the recent developments and the judicial interpretation thereof.

A very interesting recent development is that while referring the disputes to arbitration the Courts in India are now required, only to make a prima facie assessment as to the existence of the arbitration clause. This change has been brought by the recent Amendment to the Act¹. This new development reduces the time required by Court to apply its judicial mind before the disputes can travel to arbitration and gives primacy to the principle of kompetenz kompetenz recognized globally. An example of how readily courts are now referring disputes to arbitration is a recent judgment of the Supreme Court of