Justice Sanjiv Khanna, speaking during a panel discussion at Dubai Arbitration Week, 2025, on the theme “Navigating Multi-party & Cross-Border Disputes in Mega Project Arbitration,” remarked that India’s aspiration to emerge as a global arbitration hub can only be realised if the country first builds a strong and credible domestic arbitration ecosystem.
Justice Khanna outlined the foundational values that must guide arbitration, emphasising that any adjudicatory system must inspire confidence. “The first requirement is trust, integrity and credibility,” he said, adding that fairness must remain central even in high-value, complex disputes. “Each party must have an equal and fair opportunity, even if one side is more powerful economically or socially,” he noted.
Reflecting on India’s legislative journey, he pointed to the 2015 and 2019 amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act as watershed moments that reshaped timelines, neutrality standards, cost regimes and enforcement. He also outlined the six “building blocks of arbitration”, i.e. the law, courts, litigants, advocates, arbitrators, and institutions.
Addressing the growing complexity of mega-project disputes, Justice Khanna highlighted the need to carefully distinguish between interconnected contractual structures. “A distinction must be made between group of contracts, a composite contract, and group of companies,” he said. He added that multi-party issues such as joinder, consolidation, parallel proceedings and non-signatory participation require a principled approach.
Justice Khanna also stressed the importance of better drafting practices to prevent future conflicts.
“The solution lies at the drafting stage, many disputes arise simply because the contracts never anticipated how they would interact,” he said.
On institutional arbitration, he noted the rising activity within India, citing figures from the Delhi International Arbitration Centre (DIAC). “In 2024 alone, over 900 awards were issued, and total awards have now crossed 4,000,” he said, calling it an encouraging sign for India’s developing arbitration ecosystem.
He concluded his address with an illustration from an international joint-venture arbitration to demonstrate how efficiency and structured timelines can lead to quicker resolutions and greater global confidence in the Indian system.
“When arbitration is conducted efficiently, solutions often emerge on their own.”