An award rendered in 2002 was still being fought over in 2026, and the Supreme Court has now asked the Law Commission of India to study the causes of delays in executing arbitral awards.
New Delhi: Making a recommendation that goes beyond the parties before it, the Supreme Court on Wednesday requested the Law Commission of India to take up a focused study of how arbitral awards are enforced and executed, and to suggest legislative or procedural changes so that a successful party can recover within a reasonable time [M/s Royal Construction Company Pvt. Ltd. v. M/s National Projects Construction Corporation].
The request came from a Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Aparesh Kumar Singh, which was hearing a dispute from an international commercial arbitration. The parties were still litigating over enforcement of the award more than two decades after it was made, and the Registry has been told to send a copy of the judgment to the Chairman of the Law Commission.
Recovery is the real test
In the Bench’s view, arbitration is worth only as much as the successful party’s ability to recover within a reasonable time, however fast the award came or however narrow the grounds of challenge:
“The promise of arbitration remains unfulfilled if a party, having traversed the arbitral process, is compelled to embark upon another protracted course of litigation”
Delay at the enforcement stage, the Court said, weakens arbitration as an alternative to civil litigation. Among the aspects it flagged for scrutiny were how the award-debtor’s assets are identified and disclosed, how the different modes of execution fit together, how repetitive or dilatory objections are handled, and how long it takes to bring execution to an end.
An award of 2002 and a courtroom in 2026
The award in this matter was rendered in 2002, and over 24 years later the parties were still in court about enforcing it.
Section 36 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 treats a domestic award that has not been set aside as a decree of a court. The winning party must therefore go through the execution machinery of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and objections and procedural steps along that route can stretch the process by years.
What the Law Commission has been asked to examine
The Court wants the Commission to undertake a “focused study of the statutory and procedural framework” governing enforcement and execution of arbitral awards, to pinpoint the practical obstacles to timely recovery, and to look at how other jurisdictions deal with the problem.
It also wants the Commission to consider whether domestic and foreign awards call for separate enforcement procedures or a common framework with safeguards, all while preserving the legitimate procedural protections available to judgment-debtors.
Case Title: M/s Royal Construction Company Pvt. Ltd. v. M/s National Projects Construction Corporation
Bench: Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Aparesh Kumar Singh, Supreme Court of India
Date of Judgment: October 28, 2026
Appearances: Senior Advocate Rishabh Sancheti with Advocates Padma Priya, Sarvam Ritam Khare, Anchit Bhandari, Nishant Kumar, Aquib Ali Khan, Dhaval Gaur and Devanshi Sancheti for the petitioner; Additional Solicitor General Vikramjit Banerjee with Advocates Aditya Kashyap, Richa Attrey, Paritosh Buddhiraja, Sahil Bhalotia, Maneesha Sunil Kumar and Himanshu Sharma for the respondent