The clause is the first line of the dispute
A poorly drafted arbitration clause is one of the most common sources of satellite litigation, because the parties end up arguing about how to arbitrate before they ever argue about the underlying dispute. A workable clause fixes the seat of arbitration, the number of arbitrators, the institution if any, the language, and the governing law, and does so in terms that do not conflict with each other elsewhere in the contract. Institutional arbitration, under a body with its own rules and administrative support, tends to run more predictably than an ad-hoc arbitration left entirely to the parties and the tribunal to organise, though it comes at a higher upfront cost.
Getting interim protection quickly
Before a tribunal is even constituted, a party can approach the court under Section 9 for interim measures, such as securing the amount in dispute or preserving property. Once the tribunal is in place, the same kind of relief is usually sought from the tribunal itself under Section 17, whose orders are enforceable in the same manner as a court order. Choosing the right stage to seek this relief, and not delaying once the need for it becomes apparent, matters more here than in most other proceedings, since the value of interim relief depends heavily on speed.
The Section 29A timeline
Section 29A sets a time limit for the tribunal to render its award, ordinarily twelve months from completion of pleadings, extendable by consent for a further six months and beyond that only with the court's permission. This has changed how arbitrations are conducted in practice, pushing tribunals and parties toward tighter hearing schedules than was once typical, and a party that treats an arbitration as an open-ended process risks losing the procedural advantages the timeline is meant to create.
The narrow ground for challenging an award
An application under Section 34 to set aside an award is not an appeal on the merits. The grounds are limited by statute, chiefly incapacity, invalidity of the agreement, denial of a fair hearing, an award dealing with matters outside the reference, or conflict with the public policy of India, the last of which courts have interpreted narrowly rather than as a general licence to reopen the tribunal's findings. Parties who go into a Section 34 application expecting the court to re-decide the dispute are usually disappointed, and that expectation is worth correcting early.
