India Inc leans towards domestic arbitration for dispute resolution over lengthy litigations

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

India Inc. intends to use domestic arbitration more in future for the resolution of both small and large disputes, a survey conducted with about 110 respondents including general counsels and promoters of companies showed.

The survey by law firm Khaitan & Co shared exclusively with ET, showed that companies will use domestic arbitration for both small disputes (75%) and large disputes (85%) over any other dispute resolution mechanism.

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Interestingly, most respondents preferred to appoint either a retired judge or an industry expert as an arbitrator (55.86%), followed by counsels (33.33%), law firm partners (25.33%) and non-lawyers (3.06%).

The findings become relevant at a time when case pendency is increasing in the courts. As per the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), all the courts have a combined over 44 million pending cases. This includes 6.183 million in 25 high courts and over 79,750 cases in the Supreme Court.

Haigreve Khaitan, senior partner, Khaitan & Co, said arbitration is an efficient and effective dispute resolution mechanism critical to Indian business, foreign investment in India, the Indian economy, and the rule of law.

According to the survey, over 80% of the respondents considered that emergency arbitration measures for urgent or time-sensitive