Delhi HC rejects Future Group’s plea to terminate arbitration before SIAC

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed Future Group’s plea seeking termination of the arbitration proceedings initiated by Amazon before the Singapore International Arbitration Court (SIAC), as reported by Bar and Bench.

Justice C Hari Shankar said that he has not expressed any opinion on the merits of the arguments raised by the parties and that the arbitration before the SIAC will continue.

On November 17, the Supreme Court (SC) had said that it would not allow stalling of arbitrary proceedings before the SIAC.

“You (Future group and others) cannot keep stultifying the proceeding before the arbitral tribunal and this is just a ploy to delay the proceeding. These are all ploys by well-heeled parties to delay the arbitration proceeding. Your client is trying to be too clever by half,” a bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices Hima Kohli and JB Pardiwala had said.

Amazon is reportedly not in the favour of stalling the arbitral proceedings. The Future Group in October filed a plea in the Delhi High Court to challenge the decision of the Arbitral Tribunal to put a stay on the final hearings.

Future Group argued that the tribunal’s order was a “stark abdication of jurisdiction” as the SC had already ordered to pass the orders.

“This approach has in essence rendered the hearings on the termination applications an exercise in redundancy for it is the same arguments and pleading which will be regurgitated in the final hearing, putting the Petitioners to considerable prejudice in terms of cost as also time,” said the plea said, according to LiveLaw.

Amazon later moved the SC asking for permission to get the arbitration proceedings restarted before the tribunal. It was in this case that CJI DY Chandrachud said that the Future Group was intending to stall the proceedings.