EMERGENCY ARBITRATION IN INDIA: ENFORCEABILITY, ACCESS, AND THE UNFINISHED STATUTORY FRAMEWORK
AUTHOR – SIMRAN KHAN, STUDENT AT GOVERNMENT LAW COLLEGE, MUMBAI
BEST CITATION – SIMRAN KHAN, EMERGENCY ARBITRATION IN INDIA: ENFORCEABILITY, ACCESS, AND THE UNFINISHED STATUTORY FRAMEWORK, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (10) OF 2026, PG. 171-174, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
Abstract
Emergency arbitration (“EA”) allows parties to seek urgent interim relief before an arbitral tribunal is even constituted, filling a critical gap between the commencement of a dispute and the availability of a decision-maker. While EA has been a standard feature of major international institutional rules for over a decade, Indian arbitration law has never expressly recognised it. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“the Act”) contains no reference to an “emergency arbitrator,” and Parliament chose not to act on the 246th Law Commission Report’s recommendation to amend the definition of “arbitral tribunal” to include one. Into this legislative vacuum stepped the judiciary. In Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC v. Future Retail Ltd. (2021), the Supreme Court held that an emergency arbitrator’s award, in an India-seated arbitration, qualifies as an order under Section 17(1) of the Act and is therefore enforceable as an order of a court under Section 17(2). This paper argues that while the Amazon ruling was a necessary and pro-arbitration intervention, it is an interpretive patch rather than a structural solution. It leaves unresolved the enforceability of EA orders in foreign-seated arbitrations, offers no relief to parties without access to institutional rules that provide for EA, and does nothing to correct the access-to-justice imbalance that allows only well-resourced corporate parties to meaningfully benefit from the mechanism. The paper concludes that a targeted legislative amendment—not further judicial improvisation—is necessary to place emergency arbitration in India on a stable and equitable footing.