Arbitration Amendment Acts – iPleaders

The arbitration amendment acts of 2015, 2019 and 2021 reshaped the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and a draft 2024 Bill proposes the next round. Together they cut court delay, fixed time limits, and reworked how arbitral awards are challenged and enforced.

In 2024 the government released a draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill for public consultation, built on the report of an expert committee that reviewed the arbitration framework. The draft proposes to recognise emergency arbitration, create appellate arbitral tribunals, and write the seat of arbitration into the statute. As of 2026 the Bill remains a consultation draft, so the law that actually governs an arbitration is still the 1996 Act as amended in 2015, 2019 and 2021.

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This article sets out what each of the arbitration amendment acts changed, what the 2024 Bill proposes, and which version governs a given arbitration.

Why India passed three arbitration amendment acts after 1996

India passed three arbitration amendment acts after 1996 because the original statute, meant to make commercial dispute resolution quick and final, had in practice become slow and heavily court-controlled. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 replaced three older laws and adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law, but two decades of litigation had loaded it with delay: awards were routinely stayed the moment a challenge was filed, appointment of arbitrators sat in the courts for months, and there was no outer time limit for finishing an arbitration.

Each amendment answered a different part of that problem. The 2015 Act attacked delay and court intervention directly, fixing time limits and cutting the automatic stay on awards. The 2019 Act tried to shift India from ad hoc arbitration towards institutional arbitration, and set up a regulator to grade institutions. The 2021 Act pulled back one 2019 measure that had misfired and added a fraud-and-corruption safeguard on enforcement. The reforms are best read together, because later amendments repeatedly adjusted what earlier ones had done.

Getting arbitration right matters well beyond litigation. Most cross-border commercial contracts now settle their disputes by arbitration rather than in court, so the reliability of the arbitration clause is a live drafting concern for anyone who works with foreign clients, a point that this guide to contract drafting for foreign clients develops from the commercial side. A broader survey of the reform arc is available in our overview of the recent amendments in arbitration law in India.

What the 2015 Amendment Act changed

The 2015 Amendment Act made arbitration faster and less dependent on the courts, and it took effect on 23 October 2015. It grew out of the 246th Report of the Law Commission of India, which had mapped the delays in the 1996 regime and proposed targeted fixes. The changes touched interim relief, the appointment and independence of arbitrators, time limits, costs, and the grounds for challenging an award.

Interim relief and court intervention (Sections 9 and 17)

The 2015 Act narrowed when a party can run to court and strengthened the tribunal instead. Under the amended Section 9, once the tribunal is constituted a court should not entertain an application for interim measures unless it finds that the tribunal’s remedy would not be efficacious. It also added a discipline on the party that wins pre-arbitration relief: an arbitration must begin within 90 days of a Section 9 order, so interim protection cannot be used as a substitute for actually arbitrating.

The tribunal side gained real force. The amended Section 17 gave an arbitral tribunal the same power to grant interim measures as a court, and made its order enforceable in the same manner as an order of the court. Before this, a tribunal’s interim order had weak teeth, and parties preferred Section 9. The split of powers between the two provisions, and when each is used, is set out in our note on interim relief in arbitration under Section 9 and Section 17.

Independence of arbitrators (Section 12, Fifth and Seventh Schedules)

The 2015 Act built a concrete test for arbitrator bias into the statute. The amended Section 12 requires a proposed arbitrator to disclose in writing any circumstances likely to raise justifiable doubts about independence or impartiality, and it introduced two new schedules to give that duty content. The Fifth Schedule lists the relationships and interests that guide whether such doubts exist, drawn from the International Bar Association guidelines on conflicts.

The Seventh Schedule went further. A person who falls within any of its categories, for example an employee, adviser, or someone with a controlling interest in a party, is ineligible to act as arbitrator, and that ineligibility cannot be cured except by an express written waiver after the dispute arises. This directly hit a common Indian practice of a party or its officer being named as the arbitrator in the contract. The full analysis is covered in our post on the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015.

Time limits and the fast-track procedure (Sections 29A and 29B)

The 2015 Act put a clock on arbitration for the first time. The new Section 29A required a tribunal to make its award within 12 months of entering upon the reference, extendable by six months if the parties agree, and only by a court beyond that. If the delay is attributable to the tribunal, the court can reduce its fees, and it can impose conditions when it grants an extension.

Section 29B added an optional fast-track procedure. Parties can agree that the dispute will be decided on documents alone, without an oral hearing unless the tribunal considers it necessary, and the award must then be made within six months. The two provisions together gave commercial parties a way to bind a tribunal to a timetable, which the open-ended 1996 model never did.

Costs, public policy and the end of the automatic stay (Sections 31A, 34 and 36)

The 2015 Act changed how awards are challenged and enforced in three ways that still shape practice. Section 31A introduced a costs regime under which costs generally follow the event, so the losing party ordinarily pays, and a refusal to accept a reasonable settlement offer can count against a party on costs. This replaced the older habit of courts declining to award real costs.

Section 34, which lists the grounds for setting aside an award, was tightened so that the public policy ground is limited to awards induced by fraud or corruption, awards that contravene the fundamental policy of Indian law, or awards that conflict with the most basic notions of morality or justice, and a court cannot review the merits of the dispute. A separate patent illegality ground was added for purely domestic awards, but not for international commercial arbitration. Most consequentially, the amended Section 36 removed the automatic stay that used to freeze enforcement the instant a Section 34 challenge was filed. A party challenging an award now has to apply separately for a stay, and the court can impose conditions such as a deposit. The Supreme Court in Board of Control for Cricket in India v. Kochi Cricket Pvt. Ltd. held that this change applies to pending challenges as well, not only to new ones.

What the 2019 Amendment Act changed

The 2019 Amendment Act tried to move India from ad hoc arbitration towards institutional arbitration, and it created a national regulator for the sector. It followed the report of the high-level committee chaired by Justice B. N. Srikrishna, which had studied how to institutionalise arbitration and make India a preferred seat. The changes reworked how arbitrators are appointed, added confidentiality and immunity provisions, recalibrated the time limits from 2015, and inserted one provision that the Supreme Court later struck down.

Institutional appointment of arbitrators (Section 11)

The 2019 Act shifted the appointment of arbitrators away from the courts and towards designated arbitral institutions. Under the amended Section 11, the Supreme Court for international commercial arbitration, and the High Court for other arbitrations, may designate arbitral institutions that then make the appointment when parties fail to agree. The aim was to take routine appointment work out of congested court dockets and route it through institutions that specialise in it.

The amendment also compressed the timetable around appointment and required the process to be handled expeditiously, keeping the 2015 principle that a court examining an appointment application looks only at the existence of an arbitration agreement, not the merits.

The Arbitration Council of India and the Eighth Schedule

The 2019 Act created the Arbitration Council of India as a statutory body to grade arbitral institutions, accredit arbitrators, and promote India as a hub for domestic and international arbitration. The Council was the centrepiece of the institutional push, meant to lift standards across a fragmented market of arbitral institutions.

Alongside it, the Act inserted an Eighth Schedule listing the qualifications and experience an arbitrator must have to be accredited. This drew sharp criticism, because the schedule was read as effectively excluding foreign-qualified lawyers and some professionals from acting as arbitrators in India, which cut against the goal of attracting international work. That criticism led directly to the 2021 change described below. In practice, the provisions setting up the Council were not brought into force straight away, so the regulator existed on paper before it operated.

Confidentiality, immunity and revised timelines (Sections 42A, 42B, 23 and 29A)

The 2019 Act added protections that the 1996 statute had lacked. Section 42A requires the arbitrator, the arbitral institution, and the parties to keep the proceedings confidential, except where disclosure is necessary to enforce the award. Section 42B gives an arbitrator immunity from suit for anything done in good faith in the conduct of the arbitration, which protects arbitrators from tactical litigation by a losing party.

The Act also adjusted the 2015 clock. A new Section 23(4) required the statement of claim and defence to be completed within six months of the arbitrators receiving notice of appointment, and Section 29A was amended so the 12-month period for the award now runs from the completion of pleadings rather than from the tribunal entering upon reference. International commercial arbitration was taken out of the mandatory 12-month limit and asked only to conclude as expeditiously as possible, a concession to the reality of complex cross-border cases. The practical effect of these shifts is traced in our post on the impact of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2019.

Section 87 and why the Supreme Court struck it down

The 2019 Act inserted Section 87, which provided that the 2015 amendments would not apply to arbitrations commenced before 23 October 2015 or to related court proceedings, unless the parties agreed otherwise. This was meant to settle the retrospectivity question, but it reversed the Supreme Court’s position in BCCI v. Kochi Cricket, and it revived the automatic stay for a large body of older matters.

The Supreme Court struck Section 87 down in Hindustan Construction Company Ltd. v. Union of India, holding it manifestly arbitrary. Reviving the automatic stay, the Court reasoned, defeated the very object of the 2015 reform and left award-holders unable to realise their awards for years. The ruling reinstated the BCCI v. Kochi Cricket approach, so the removal of the automatic stay again applied to court proceedings begun on or after 23 October 2015, whatever the date the arbitration itself started.

What the 2021 Amendment Act changed

The 2021 Amendment Act made two focused changes: it added an unconditional stay for awards tainted by fraud or corruption, and it removed the Eighth Schedule that the 2019 Act had inserted. It replaced an ordinance promulgated on 4 November 2020 and took effect from that date. Compared with the sweeping 2015 and 2019 reforms, the 2021 Act was a corrective, aimed at fixing specific complaints.

Unconditional stay for fraud or corruption (Section 36)

The 2021 Act gave courts the power to stay an award unconditionally where fraud or corruption is alleged. It added a proviso to Section 36 under which, if the court is prima facie satisfied that the arbitration agreement or the contract underlying the award, or the making of the award itself, was induced or effected by fraud or corruption, it must stay the award unconditionally while the Section 34 challenge is decided. Parliament made this proviso apply as if it had been inserted from 23 October 2015, so it reaches back over awards made since the 2015 regime began.

The measure was defended as a shield against enforcement of corrupt awards, but arbitration practitioners warned it could be misused. Because a party only has to make out a prima facie case of fraud to obtain an unconditional stay, the fear was that this reopened a route to freezing enforcement, partly undoing the discipline the 2015 Act had built into Section 36.

Rollback of the Eighth Schedule

The 2021 Act deleted the Eighth Schedule and moved the question of arbitrator qualifications to regulations. It omitted the schedule that had listed rigid qualification and experience norms, and provided instead that the accreditation of arbitrators would be governed by regulations made by the Arbitration Council of India. The stated purpose was to let eminent arbitrators, including foreign professionals, take part in India-seated arbitration and to promote the country as a venue for international commercial arbitration. This directly answered the criticism the 2019 schedule had attracted. The change is analysed further in our post on the 2021 amendment of the Arbitration Act.

What the 2024 Bill proposes to change

The draft 2024 Bill proposes the widest set of reforms since 2015, and it remains a consultation draft rather than law. The Department of Legal Affairs released the draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 for public comment in 2024, built on the report of an expert committee chaired by Dr. T. K. Viswanathan that had reviewed the working of the arbitration law. The draft aims to promote institutional arbitration, reduce court intervention, and bring Indian arbitration closer to international practice.

Emergency arbitration and appellate arbitral tribunals

The draft Bill would give two new mechanisms a place in the statute. It proposes statutory recognition of emergency arbitration, so that an emergency arbitrator appointed under institutional rules can grant urgent interim relief before the main tribunal is constituted, and that order would carry statutory force. This would codify a position the Supreme Court had already reached by interpretation, as explained in our guide to emergency arbitration in India.

The draft also proposes appellate arbitral tribunals, a forum to hear challenges to awards within the arbitral system rather than sending every dispute straight to court under Section 34. The intent is to keep more of the review process inside arbitration and to relieve the courts, though the design and the interaction with existing court remedies are among the points raised in consultation.

Seat of arbitration and reduced court intervention

The draft Bill would write the concept of seat of arbitration into the Act and adjust the definition of court. Indian arbitration law developed the seat concept largely through case law, and the draft proposes to amend Section 20 to state it in the statute, which would reduce a recurring source of jurisdictional disputes about which court supervises an arbitration. The draft also proposes tighter timelines for court applications connected to arbitration and other measures meant to limit the occasions for judicial intervention.

Will the 2024 Bill become law?

The 2024 Bill has not become law, and as of 2026 it has not been introduced in Parliament. It sits at the consultation stage, where the government has invited and received comments on the draft, and its provisions can change before any Bill is tabled. Until Parliament passes it and the government notifies it, none of the 2024 proposals govern an arbitration. The current status, and how the draft compares with the enacted position, is tracked in our post on the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024.

The arbitration amendment acts compared: 2015, 2019 and 2021

The three arbitration amendment acts each targeted a different problem, and reading them side by side shows the direction of travel. The 2015 Act was about speed and reduced court control; the 2019 Act was about institutions and standards; the 2021 Act was a corrective on enforcement and arbitrator eligibility. The comparison below sets out the basis, the headline changes, and the effective date of each.

The pattern is one of continuous adjustment rather than a single settled reform. Provisions introduced in 2015 were recalibrated in 2019, a 2019 provision was struck down by the Supreme Court and another was rolled back in 2021, and the 2024 draft returns to themes the earlier amendments had left open. A party or adviser cannot treat the 1996 Act as a fixed text; the operative rule on any given question depends on which amendment last touched it and when the arbitration began.

Which amendment applies to your arbitration?

The version that applies to an arbitration depends on when the arbitration began and, separately, when the related court proceeding began. The 1996 Act as it stands today already incorporates the 2015, 2019 and 2021 changes, so a fresh arbitration started now is governed by the consolidated text. The difficulty arises only with older matters that straddle the 2015 cut-off, and there the rule comes from the case law rather than the bare statute.

For those older matters, the 2015 amendments apply to arbitral proceedings that commenced on or after 23 October 2015, and, following BCCI v. Kochi Cricket as reinstated in Hindustan Construction, to court proceedings commenced on or after that date even where the arbitration itself began earlier. In practice this matters most for the automatic stay under Section 36: whether an award is frozen on the filing of a challenge, or enforceable unless a stay is granted, turns on when the enforcement or challenge proceeding was filed. The 2021 fraud-and-corruption proviso, by contrast, was made to apply from 23 October 2015 regardless, so it can be raised across that whole period.

For anyone drafting or advising today, the practical takeaways are narrow. Name the seat and the governing law expressly, choose an arbitral institution whose rules fit the dispute, and remember that a tribunal now works to a statutory clock that a court will enforce. Lawyers who want to build this into a practice area will find the route mapped in this guide on how to become an arbitration lawyer in India.

Frequently asked questions

What are the arbitration amendment acts in India?

The arbitration amendment acts are the statutes that amended the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, passed in 2015, 2019 and 2021, together with the draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 that proposes the next round of changes. The 2015 Act cut delay and court intervention, the 2019 Act promoted institutional arbitration and set up the Arbitration Council of India, and the 2021 Act added an unconditional stay for awards induced by fraud or corruption and removed the Eighth Schedule. The 2024 Bill is still a consultation draft and is not yet law.

What did the 2015 arbitration amendment change?

The 2015 amendment made arbitration faster and less court-controlled. It fixed a 12-month time limit for awards under Section 29A and an optional six-month fast-track under Section 29B, strengthened the tribunal’s interim powers under Section 17, added the Fifth and Seventh Schedules on arbitrator independence, introduced a costs regime under Section 31A, narrowed the public policy ground under Section 34, and removed the automatic stay on enforcement under Section 36. It took effect on 23 October 2015.

Why was Section 87 struck down?

Section 87, inserted by the 2019 amendment, was struck down because the Supreme Court found it manifestly arbitrary in Hindustan Construction Company Ltd. v. Union of India. The provision would have revived the automatic stay on awards for older matters by making the 2015 amendments apply only prospectively, which defeated the object of the 2015 reform and delayed award-holders for years. Striking it down reinstated the earlier position in BCCI v. Kochi Cricket.

What did the 2021 amendment change about enforcement?

The 2021 amendment gave courts the power to stay an award unconditionally where fraud or corruption is alleged. It added a proviso to Section 36 under which, if a court is prima facie satisfied that the arbitration agreement, the underlying contract, or the making of the award was induced by fraud or corruption, it must stay the award unconditionally while the challenge is decided. This proviso was made to apply as if inserted from 23 October 2015. The amendment also removed the Eighth Schedule on arbitrator qualifications.

Is the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 now law?

No. The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 is a consultation draft released by the Department of Legal Affairs, and as of 2026 it has not been introduced in Parliament or enacted. Its proposals, which include statutory emergency arbitration, appellate arbitral tribunals, and a statutory seat of arbitration, do not yet govern any arbitration. Until Parliament passes and the government notifies it, the governing law remains the 1996 Act as amended in 2015, 2019 and 2021.

Which arbitration amendment applies to an ongoing case?

The amendment that applies depends on when the arbitration and the related court proceeding began. A fresh arbitration started now is governed by the 1996 Act as it currently stands, incorporating all three amendments. For older matters, the 2015 amendments apply to arbitral proceedings commenced on or after 23 October 2015, and to court proceedings commenced on or after that date, following BCCI v. Kochi Cricket as reinstated in Hindustan Construction. The 2021 fraud-and-corruption proviso applies across that period regardless.

References

Case law

1. Board of Control for Cricket in India v. Kochi Cricket Pvt. Ltd., (2018) 6 SCC 287
2. Hindustan Construction Company Ltd. v. Union of India, (2020) 17 SCC 324

Statutes and official material

1. Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996
2. Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 (effective 23 October 2015)
3. Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2019
4. Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2021 (effective 4 November 2020)
5. Law Commission of India, 246th Report on Amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (2014)
6. High Level Committee to Review the Institutionalisation of Arbitration Mechanism in India (Srikrishna Committee), Report (2017)
7. Draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 (Department of Legal Affairs consultation draft), based on the report of the expert committee chaired by Dr. T. K. Viswanathan (2024)

Related reading

1. Impact of recent amendments in arbitration law in India
2. Analysis and interpretation of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015
3. The impact of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2019
4. The 2021 amendment of the Arbitration Act
5. Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024

This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified legal practitioner for advice on their specific circumstances.