The Illusion of Restraint: The Paradox of Supreme Court Jurisprudence under Article 226 and 227 in Arbitration

This paper examines the Supreme Court’s two competing lines of jurisprudence concerning writ interference in arbitral proceedings under Articles 226 and 226. Specifically, it argues that the Court’s ostensibly “restrictive” approach, intended to reduce judicial interference, has paradoxically expanded the scope for intervention by relying on open-ended standards that allow procedural grievances to be reframed as exceptional cases, thereby enabling courts to examine arbitral proceedings on their merits. This paper traces the contradiction of the minimal court intervention promise found in the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and compares India’s positions with jurisdictions that have far more precisely defined intervention thresholds.

Aditya Mudhana