Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996

Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 sets the time limit for arbitral awards: a domestic tribunal must make its award within 12 months from the date the pleadings are completed, and the parties can add another 6 months by consent. Beyond that combined period of 18 months, only a court can extend the tribunal’s mandate, and only for sufficient cause. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rohan Builders v. Berger Paints (2024), that extension can be sought even after the deadline has passed. This article explains how the clock runs, how the mandate is extended or terminated, which court hears the application, and where the law now stands.

This article sets out the time limit for arbitral awards under Section 29A, how the 12-month clock is counted, how the mandate is extended by consent or by a court, and the recent rulings that reshaped the position.

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Speed was the whole point of Section 29A. Parliament added it in 2015 because Indian arbitrations were dragging on for years, defeating the reason parties chose arbitration over a civil suit in the first place. The provision put a hard clock on the tribunal, and it gave courts a supervisory role when that clock runs out.

The rules have shifted twice since then. The 2019 amendment moved the starting line and carved out international commercial arbitration, and a run of decisions between 2020 and 2024 settled the questions that used to trip up parties, above all whether an extension can be sought after the mandate has already expired. What follows tracks the current position, subsection by subsection, with the case law that decides each point.

Section 29A and the 12-month rule for arbitral awards

The time limit for an arbitral award under Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is 12 months. For a domestic arbitration, the tribunal must make its award within 12 months from the date the pleadings are completed. That single duty, placed on the tribunal itself, is the core of the provision.

The 12-month period is not the only number that matters. The parties can extend it by up to 6 months by mutual consent, which takes the outer limit to 18 months before any court has to be involved. Only after those 18 months does the tribunal’s authority come into question, and only a court can revive it. So the practical timeline every party should carry in their head is simple: 12 months as of right, 18 months with consent, and court territory after that.

Section 29A did not always read this way. When it was introduced by the 2015 amendment, the clock started when the tribunal “entered upon the reference”, a vague trigger that invited disputes about the exact start date. The 2019 amendment fixed that by tying the start to the completion of pleadings, a date the record actually shows. It also separated out international commercial arbitration, which now sits under a softer rule discussed later in this article.

Worth flagging at the outset: making the award in time is only the first gate. Once a valid award exists and the window to challenge it under Section 34 has closed, it moves to enforcement under Section 36, where a different set of timelines takes over. Section 29A governs the making of the award, not its execution.

When does the 12-month clock start counting?

The 12-month clock starts on the date the pleadings are completed, not the date the arbitrator is appointed. Pleadings here means the statement of claim and the statement of defence. Section 23(4) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, also added in 2019, requires those to be completed within 6 months from the date the arbitrators received notice, in writing, of their appointment.

Read together, the two provisions build in a natural sequence. The tribunal gets up to 6 months for pleadings to close, and then 12 months more to make the award. In a matter that uses the full pleadings window, the award can legitimately come almost 18 months after the arbitrator’s appointment without any consent extension at all, because the 12-month award clock only begins once pleadings end.

This start date carries real consequences, so it pays to record it precisely. The date pleadings are complete is the date the 12-month countdown begins, and it is the date a court will look to when deciding whether the mandate has expired. Parties who lose track of it are the ones who end up arguing, months later, about whether the tribunal still had authority to act.

Does the same time limit apply to every arbitration?

No, the 12-month limit does not bind every arbitration. It applies to domestic arbitrations, meaning arbitrations that are not international commercial arbitrations as defined in the Act. For international commercial arbitration, the 2019 amendment replaced the hard limit with a direction to conclude the matter as expeditiously as possible, with an endeavour to make the award within 12 months of completion of pleadings.

The difference between “must” and “endeavour” is the whole distinction. A domestic tribunal that misses 12 months, and then 18 with consent, loses its mandate unless a court steps in. An international commercial tribunal that takes longer does not automatically lose its mandate on the clock alone, because the timeline for it is directory rather than mandatory. The details of that carve-out, and the Supreme Court ruling that confirmed it, are covered in a dedicated section below.

Can parties extend the Section 29A time limit by consent?

Yes, the parties can extend the Section 29A time limit by consent, but only up to a point. Section 29A(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 lets the parties, by agreement, extend the period for making the award by a further time not exceeding 6 months. That extension does not need a court, an application, or any showing of cause. It needs only the parties’ consent.

The 6-month cap is firm. Consent can buy the tribunal up to 6 extra months and no more, so the parties cannot agree between themselves to a 12-month or open-ended extension. If they want the tribunal to continue beyond the combined 18-month period, consent stops being enough, and the matter has to go to court. This is a common misunderstanding: parties assume that because arbitration is a creature of agreement, they can keep extending time by writing to each other. They cannot, once the consent extension is spent.

How the consent extension is recorded matters in practice. The usual route is a short joint memo or a consent order before the tribunal, extending the mandate by the agreed period under Section 29A(3). In RCC Infraventures Ltd. v. DMI Finance Pvt. Ltd., 2024 DHC 9829, the parties completed pleadings on 18 May 2022, extended the sole arbitrator’s mandate by a further 6 months through a joint memo under Section 29A(3), and only then, when even that period was running short, moved the Delhi High Court for a longer extension. That sequence, consent first and court later, is the pattern the section is built around.

There is a practical reason to use the consent extension early rather than let time lapse. While the arbitration is on foot, a party worried that the other side will dissipate assets during the delay can seek interim relief under Section 9 or Section 17, which runs on its own footing and does not depend on the award clock. Keeping the mandate alive by consent, and protecting the subject matter by interim relief, are two separate levers, and a careful party uses both.

The court’s power to extend, substitute, and cut fees under Section 29A

Once the consent period lapses, only a court can keep the arbitration alive. Section 29A(4) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 states that if the award is not made within the 12-month period, or the extended period agreed under Section 29A(3), the mandate of the arbitrator terminates unless the court has extended the period. The court’s power under Section 29A(4) and (5) is therefore the gateway to any arbitration that runs past 18 months.

The court does not extend as a formality. Under Section 29A(5), it may extend the period only for sufficient cause and on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit. That discretion is real, and an application that offers no genuine reason for the delay can be refused, leaving the parties with a terminated mandate and the prospect of starting again.

The section gives the court more than a stopwatch. While extending time, the court can also reshape the tribunal. Under Section 29A(6), it may substitute one or all of the arbitrators, and under Section 29A(7), where arbitrators are substituted, the proceedings continue from the stage already reached, on the evidence and material already on record. A fresh arbitrator does not mean a fresh start, which spares the parties the cost of re-running the whole reference.

There is also a price the tribunal can pay for its own delay. The first proviso to Section 29A(4) lets the court, when it finds that the proceedings were delayed for reasons attributable to the tribunal, reduce the arbitrator’s fees by up to 5% for each month of delay. Section 29A(8) protects the arbitrator’s side of that by requiring an opportunity of being heard before any reduction. And Section 29A(9) tells the court to dispose of an extension application quickly, with an endeavour to do so within 60 days from the date notice is served on the opposite party.

What counts as “sufficient cause” for an extension?

Sufficient cause is not defined in the Act, and courts have deliberately kept it flexible. The guiding approach now is that “sufficient cause” should be read in a way that facilitates the effective resolution of the dispute, rather than as a trap that ends a nearly finished arbitration on a technicality. The Supreme Court took that line in Ajay Protech Pvt. Ltd. v. General Manager, 2024 INSC 889, where it held that the expression must be interpreted liberally, consistent with the court’s duty to facilitate the completion of arbitral proceedings, and extended the time even though the application had come after the mandate lapsed.

Liberal is not the same as automatic. Courts look at whether the delay was the fault of a party or of circumstances outside anyone’s control, at how far the arbitration has progressed, and at whether granting more time serves the object of a real decision on the merits. In RCC Infraventures, the Delhi High Court treated a delay of a few months as not inordinate where pleadings were complete, evidence had begun, and voluminous documents and witnesses were still to be dealt with. The stage the reference has reached often decides the application: a tribunal on the verge of an award is far more likely to get more time than one that has done nothing.

The practical reality is that the applicant carries the burden. A party seeking an extension should be ready to explain the delay with specifics, whether that is the volume of evidence, a change of arbitrator, the health of the arbitrator, or an external disruption, rather than asking the court to extend as a matter of course. An application that reads as a formality, filed only because time ran out, invites refusal.

Can a Section 29A extension be sought after the mandate expires?

Yes, an extension can be sought even after the tribunal’s mandate has expired. This was the single most contested question under Section 29A, and the Supreme Court settled it in Rohan Builders (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Berger Paints India Ltd., 2024 INSC 686, decided on 12 September 2024. The Court held that an application to extend the period under Section 29A(4) is maintainable even if it is filed after the 12-month or the extended 18-month period has ended.

The reasoning turns on what “terminate” means in the section. The Court read Section 29A(4) so that the word “terminate” does not bring the mandate to a dead and irreversible end the instant the period lapses. The subsection itself makes termination conditional, because it says the mandate terminates “unless” the court extends the period, and it lets the court extend either before or after the expiry of the specified time. On that reading, the mandate is better understood as suspended once the deadline passes, capable of being revived by a court on sufficient cause, rather than extinguished for good.

This resolved a genuine split among the High Courts. The Calcutta High Court, later joined by the Patna High Court, had held that an extension application must be filed before the mandate expired, so a party who missed the deadline was out of court. The Delhi, Bombay, Kerala, Madras, and Jammu and Kashmir High Courts had taken the opposite view, allowing applications after expiry. Rohan Builders approved the second line and overruled the first, so the position is now uniform across the country.

There is a caution built into the ruling, and it matters as much as the headline. Allowing a late application is not the same as guaranteeing an extension. The applicant still has to show sufficient cause under Section 29A(5), and the court still exercises discretion on terms it considers just. The Supreme Court applied exactly that discipline in Ajay Protech, extending time on the facts because the delay was explained, while making clear that a party cannot treat post-expiry filing as a free pass. A party that files late with no real reason should expect to lose, even though the door is technically open. Where the award has since been made and a party wants to attack it instead, the route shifts to a challenge to set aside the award under Section 34, and LawSikho’s guide on how to challenge an arbitral award under Section 34 works through that process.

Which court can extend the time limit under Section 29A?

The court that can extend the time limit is the “Court” as defined in Section 2(1)(e) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, but which court that is in practice has divided the High Courts. Section 2(1)(e) points, for a domestic arbitration, to the principal civil court of original jurisdiction in a district, or a High Court exercising ordinary original civil jurisdiction. Read literally, that could send a Section 29A application to a district court even where a High Court had appointed the arbitrator.

Several High Courts have rejected the literal reading for extension applications. In DDA v. Tara Chand Sumit Construction Co. (Delhi High Court, 12 May 2020), the Court held that an application under Section 29A for extension of the mandate lies before the High Court for a domestic arbitration, and before the Supreme Court for an international commercial arbitration. It reasoned from the phrase “unless the context otherwise requires” in Section 2(1)(e), read alongside Section 11, which makes the High Court or the Supreme Court the arbitrator-appointing authority. The logic is that the court which appointed the tribunal, and which alone can substitute it, should be the court that extends its time, otherwise a district court could be asked to replace an arbitrator a High Court had chosen.

This is often described as the “source of appointment” approach, and it avoids an odd hierarchy where a lower court supervises the mandate of an arbitrator appointed by a superior one. Not every High Court has agreed, and the debate over whether the principal civil court or the appointing court is the right forum has produced conflicting orders. For a party filing an application, the safe course is to check the settled position in the relevant High Court before choosing the forum, because filing in the wrong court costs weeks that a party racing an expired mandate can rarely spare.

What is the time limit for international commercial arbitration?

For an international commercial arbitration seated in India, the 12-month period is a target, not a binding limit. The proviso to Section 29A(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 directs that in such matters the award should be made as expeditiously as possible, with an endeavour to dispose of the matter within 12 months from the completion of pleadings. The word “endeavour” is what makes the timeline directory, so an international commercial tribunal does not lose its mandate merely because the 12 months have passed.

The Supreme Court confirmed this reading in Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. v. Siva Industries and Holdings Ltd., (2023) 5 SCC 421. The Court held that the amended Section 29A excludes international commercial arbitration from the mandatory 12-month timeline, and that the amended provision is remedial in nature, applying to all pending arbitral proceedings from the date the 2019 amendment took effect. In effect, the strict clock governs domestic arbitrations only, and international commercial arbitrations are held to a standard of reasonable diligence rather than a fixed deadline.

The reason for the carve-out was practical. International arbitral institutions had criticised the rigid Indian timeline as out of step with global practice, where complex cross-border disputes rarely fit a 12-month box. Removing the hard limit for international commercial arbitration was meant to make India a more credible seat for such disputes. Parties negotiating cross-border contracts often build their own timelines into the arbitration clause, and Skill Arbitrage’s guide to drafting contracts for foreign clients covers how those clauses are structured.

Even without a hard deadline, delay is not free in an international commercial arbitration. A tribunal that drags its feet still risks costs consequences and reputational damage, and the direction to act expeditiously is a real standard a court can hold it to. The distinction is that the consequence is not the automatic termination of the mandate that a domestic tribunal faces.

What changes to Section 29A are proposed under the draft 2024 Bill?

The draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 proposes to loosen the court’s monopoly over extensions by letting arbitral institutions do part of the job. Under the draft, the power to decide extension and substitution under Section 29A(3) to (6) would be conferred on the arbitral institution, at par with the court, in institutionally administered arbitrations. The aim is to keep timeline management inside the arbitral process rather than sending parties to court every time an award runs late.

The Bill is a proposal, not law. The Department of Legal Affairs released the draft for public consultation on 18 October 2024, and it follows the report of the expert committee chaired by Dr. T. K. Viswanathan, which reviewed the working of the 1996 Act and recommended reforms. As of the middle of 2026 the Bill has not been introduced in Parliament or enacted, so the position described in the rest of this article, that only a court can extend the mandate past the consent period, remains the operative law. iPleaders’ explainer on the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 sets out the wider set of changes the draft proposes.

If the institutional-extension proposal does become law, it would matter most for parties in institutional arbitration, who could seek more time from the institution administering their case instead of filing in a High Court. The better view, for now, is to plan around the current court-centred regime and treat the Bill as a signal of direction rather than a rule to rely on. Drafting an arbitration clause today on the assumption that an institution can extend time would be premature.

Frequently asked questions

What is the time limit for an arbitral award under Section 29A?

For a domestic arbitration, the tribunal must make its award within 12 months from the date the pleadings are completed, under Section 29A(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The parties can extend that by up to 6 months by consent, taking the outer limit to 18 months. Beyond 18 months, only a court can extend the tribunal’s mandate.

What happens if the arbitrator does not make the award within the time limit?

If the award is not made within the 12-month period or the extended 18-month period, the mandate of the arbitrator terminates unless a court extends it under Section 29A(4). The termination is not final the moment the deadline passes: the mandate can be revived by a court on sufficient cause, and it continues while an extension application is pending.

Can the Section 29A time limit be extended beyond 18 months?

Yes, but only by a court. The parties can extend by up to 6 months by consent, and any extension beyond the resulting 18-month period requires an application to the court under Section 29A(4) and (5). The court grants it only for sufficient cause and can impose conditions, including reducing the arbitrator’s fees for delay attributable to the tribunal.

Does the Section 29A time limit apply to international commercial arbitration?

No. Since the 2019 amendment, the 12-month limit is not mandatory for international commercial arbitration. The proviso to Section 29A(1) only requires the tribunal to endeavour to make the award within 12 months of completion of pleadings, and the Supreme Court in Tata Sons v. Siva Industries confirmed that the timeline is directory, not binding, for such arbitrations.

Can a court extend the time after the arbitrator’s mandate has already ended?

Yes. In Rohan Builders v. Berger Paints (2024), the Supreme Court held that an application to extend the period under Section 29A(4) is maintainable even if it is filed after the mandate has expired. The application still has to show sufficient cause, so a late filing with no genuine reason for the delay can still be refused.

Who can apply for an extension of time under Section 29A?

Any party to the arbitration can apply to the court for an extension under Section 29A(4). The application is not confined to the claimant or to the party in whose favour the arbitration is running, and it can be filed before or after the mandate expires. The court then decides, on sufficient cause, whether to extend and on what terms.

References

Case law

1. Ajay Protech Pvt. Ltd. v. General Manager, 2024 INSC 889 (Supreme Court, 22 November 2024)
2. DDA v. Tara Chand Sumit Construction Co. (Delhi High Court, 12 May 2020)
3. RCC Infraventures Ltd. v. DMI Finance Pvt. Ltd., 2024 DHC 9829 (Delhi High Court, 19 December 2024)
4. Rohan Builders (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Berger Paints India Ltd., 2024 INSC 686 (Supreme Court, 12 September 2024)
5. Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. v. Siva Industries and Holdings Ltd., (2023) 5 SCC 421

Statutes

1. Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 sections cited: 2(1)(e), 11, 23(4), 29A(1), 29A(3), 29A(4), 29A(5), 29A(6), 29A(7), 29A(8), 29A(9)

Related reading

1. Enforcement of arbitral awards in India under Section 36
2. Section 34 A&C Act: grounds for setting aside an arbitral award
3. 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.