Source: https://advocatemmmohan.com/2017/08/01/seat-of-arbitration-and-venue-of-arbitration/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 04:54:51+00:00

Document:
came to be filed before the High Court of Delhi.
objection to be filed under Section 34 before the Court.
15.02.2017 passed by the Court.
“33. Faced with this situation Mr Sen submits that, in this case the parties had agreed that the arbitration be as per the Rules of ICC. He submits that thus by necessary implication Section 9 would not apply. In our view, in such cases the question would be whether Section 9 gets excluded by the ICC Rules of Arbitration. Article 23 of the ICC Rules reads as follows: “Conservatory and interim measures 1. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, as soon as the file has been transmitted to it, the Arbitral Tribunal may, at the request of a party, order any interim or conservatory measure it deems appropriate. The Arbitral Tribunal may make the granting of any such measure subject to appropriate security being furnished by the requesting party. Any such measure shall take the form of an order, giving reasons, or of an award, as the Arbitral Tribunal considers appropriate.
of Part I of the Act.
commercial agreements are governed by the laws of another country.
all arbitrations which take place in India. Similarly, no suit for interim injunction simpliciter would be maintainable in India, on the basis of an international commercial arbitration with a seat outside India.
be governed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of India.
“23. Upon consideration of the entire matter, the High Court has held that undoubtedly the governing law of the contract i.e. proper law of the contract is the law of India. Therefore, the parties never intended to altogether exclude the laws of India, so far as contractual rights are concerned. The laws of England are limited in their applicability in relation to arbitration agreement contained in Article 33. This would mean that the English law would be applicable only with regard to the curial law matters i.e.
24. The Court, in the course of discussion, dealt with the principles set out in Dozco India Private Limited v. Doosan Infracore Company Limited12, Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. v. ONGC Ltd.13, Yograj Infrastructure Limited v. Ssang Yong Engineering and Construction Company Limited14 and Enercon (India) Ltd.
agreement and Part I of the Act.
as is proponed by the learned senior counsel for the respondents.
arbitration, so that, by agreeing to the seat, the parties agreed that any challenge to an interim or final award was to be made only in the courts of the place designated as the seat of the arbitration.
and the defendant sought the tribunal’s withdrawal of its findings.
York law has its own judicial remedies for want of jurisdiction and serious irregularity but it could scarcely be supposed that a party aggrieved by one part of an award could proceed in one jurisdiction and a party aggrieved by another part of an award could proceed in another jurisdiction. Similarly, in the case of a single complaint about an award, it could not be supposed that the aggrieved party could complain in one jurisdiction and the satisfied party be entitled to ask the other jurisdiction to declare its satisfaction with the award. There would be a serious risk of parties rushing to get the first judgment or of conflicting decisions which the parties cannot have contemplated.
entertained the challenge to the award.
32. In Reliance Industries Limited10, a two-Judge Bench referred to the decision by the Court of Appeal in C v. D (supra) and opined that it has been specifically approved by the Constitution Bench in BALCO and reiterated in Enercon (India) Ltd. (supra). The Court reproduced the conclusions of the learned Judge who delivered the judgment in C v. D (supra).
“26. The Shareholders Agreement provided that “the venue of arbitration shall be London, United Kingdom” whilst providing that the arbitration proceedings should be conducted in English in accordance with ICC Rules and that the governing law of the Shareholders Agreement itself would be the laws of India. It is accepted by both parties that the concept of the seat is one which is fundamental to the operation of the Arbitration Act and that the seat can be different from the venue in which arbitration hearings take place. It is certainly not unknown for hearings to take place in an arbitration in more than one jurisdiction for reasons of convenience of the parties or witnesses. The claimants submitted that in the ordinary way, however, if the arbitration agreement provided for a venue, that would constitute the seat. If a venue was named but there was to be a different juridical seat, it would be expected that the seat would also be specifically named. Notwithstanding the authorities cited by the defendant, I consider that there is great force in this. The defendant submits however that as “venue” is not synonymous with “seat”, there is no designation of the seat of the arbitration by clause 14.4 and, in the absence of any designation, when regard is had to the parties’ agreement and all the relevant circumstances, the juridical seat must be in India and the curial law must be Indian law.
“33. Whilst there is no material before me which would fully support an argument on estoppel, it is interesting to note that at an earlier stage of the history of this matter, the defendant had no difficulty in putting forward London as the seat of the arbitration. On 14th February 2006 the defendant’s lawyers, when writing to the arbitral tribunal stated “the seat of the arbitration is London and the first respondent submits that the curial law of the arbitration is English law. That means the arbitration is governed by the Arbitration Act 1996”. Further, when challenging the appointment of Mr Salve as an arbitrator, in its application to the ICC, the defendant said that “the fact that the present arbitration is an English seated ICC arbitration is undisputed. Accordingly ICC Rules shall be paramount in adjudicating the present challenge. Further, the curial seat of arbitration being London, settled propositions of English law shall also substantially impinge upon the matter. This position is taken without prejudice to the first respondent’s declared contention that the law of the arbitration agreement is Indian law, as also that the substantive law governing the dispute is Indian law”.
“37. None of this has any application to the position as between England and India. The body of law which establishes that an agreement to the seat of an arbitration is akin to an exclusive jurisdiction clause remains good law. If the defendant is right, C v D would now have to be decided differently. Both the USA (with which C v D was concerned) and India are parties to the New York Convention, but the basis of the Convention, as explained in C v D, as applied in England in accordance with its own principles on the conflict of laws, is that the courts of the seat of arbitration are the only courts where the award can be challenged whilst, of course, under Article V of the Convention there are limited grounds upon which other contracting states can refuse to recognise or enforce the award once made.
required, and hence, the said ruling cannot be binding on the parties.
another anti-suit injunction matter, approvingly quoted by the Constitution Bench in BALCO is not correct and, therefore, conclusion of Enercon (India) Ltd. (supra) to that extent is per incuriam. For the aforesaid purpose, he has commended us to Sundeep Kumar Bafna v. State of Maharashtra and another18 and Fibre Boards Private Limited, Bangalore v. Commissioner of Income Tax, Bangalore19.
Statutory Interpretation, 12th Edition and thereafter referred to the principles stated in State of Orissa v. M.A. Tulloch and Co.22 and Rayala Corporation (P) Ltd. v. Director of Enforcement23. In the said case, the Court followed the principle stated in M.A. Tulloch (supra) and not the one enunciated in Rayala Corporation (P) Ltd.
deserves to be treated as per incuriam.
not and also address to the other contentions raised by the parties.
116. The legal position that emerges from a conspectus of all the decisions, seems to be, that the choice of another country as the seat of arbitration inevitably imports an acceptance that the law of that country relating to the conduct and supervision of arbitrations will apply to the proceedings.
submission of Mr. Chidambaram that the finding recorded in Enercon (India) Ltd. (supra) that Shashoua principle has been accepted in BALCO should be declared as per incuriam.
that in such a situation the Courts in London will have jurisdiction.
any hesitation, we reject the said submission.
right to raise the issue of jurisdiction has been waived.
the cause. For the said purpose the two-Judge Bench has placed reliance upon United Commercial Bank Ltd. (supra), State of Gujarat v. Rajesh Kumar Chimanlal Barot42, Kesar Singh v.
a court to try the dispute which the court does not possess.
proceedings shall be in accordance with the Rules of Conciliation and Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce Paris.
14.2 Proceedings in such arbitrations shall be conducted in the English language.
14.3 The arbitration award shall be substantiated in writing and shall be final and binding on the parties.
elaborate, the distinction between the venue and the seat remains.
“13. It can be seen that this Court in Singer case did not give effect to the difference between the substantive law of the contract and the law that governed the arbitration. Therefore, since a construction of Section 9(b) of the Foreign Awards Act led to the aforesaid situation and led to the doctrine of concurrent jurisdiction, the 1996 Act, while enacting Section 9(a) of the repealed Foreign Awards Act, 1961, in Section 51 thereof, was careful enough to omit Section 9(b) of the 1961 Act which, as stated hereinabove, excluded the Foreign Awards Act from applying to any award made on arbitration agreements governed by the law of India.
Date : 04-07-2017 These appeals were called on for judgment today.
For Respondent(s) Ms. Sneha Kalita, AOR Hon’ble Mr. Justice Dipak Misra pronounced the judgment of the Bench consisting of His Lordship and Hon’ble Mrs. Justice R. Banumathi. The appeals are allowed in terms of the signed reportable judgment. In the facts and circumstances of the case, there shall be no order as to costs.
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