"I realise that some of my criticisms may be mistaken; but to refuse to criticize judgements for fear of being mistaken is to abandon criticism altogether... If any of my criticisms are found to be correct, the cause is served; and if any are found to be incorrect the very process of finding out my mistakes must lead to the discovery of the right reasons, or better reasons than I have been able to give, and the cause is served just as well."

-Mr. HM Seervai, Preface to the 1st ed., Constitutional Law of India.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Reciprocal Arrangement Countries under Section 44 of the 1996 Act

In one of the conferences on International Arbitration held in May this year, a partner of a Delhi-based law firm remarked that nobody knew the complete list of territories with which India had a reciprocal arrangement as per Section 44(b) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The remark prompted this blawgger to attempt to find out such a list. This short post deals with this the list of such territories.

"Section 44: Definition.- In this Chapter, unless the context otherwise requires, "foreign award" means an arbitral award on differences between persons arising out of legal relationships, whether contractual or not, considered as commercial under the law in force in India, made on or after the 11th day of October, 1960-
(a) in pursuance of an agreement in writing for arbitration to which the Convention set forth in the First Schedule applies, and
(b) in one of such territories as the Central Government, being satisfied that reciprocal provisions have been made may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare to be territories to which the said Convention applies."

Section 44 defines the term "foreign award" for the purposes of Chapter I, Part II of 1996 Act. According to it, a foreign award must satisfy the following conditions:
  • It must be an arbitral award on the differences between persons.
  • Such differences must have arisen out of legal relationships, whether contractual or otherwise.
  • The award was in pursuance of an arbitration agreement to which the New York Convention applied.
  • The award was made in one of the territories to which the Convention applied and the Central Government had notified that such a country had made reciprocal provisions for enforcement of such awards made in India.
Justice Bachawat's Law of Arbitration & Conciliation (5th ed. 2010), P.2264 ff. has an excellent discussion on the subject and one may refer to the same for detailed analysis. The said commentary (at p. 2296) provides a list of countries that were notified under Section 2 of the Foreign Awards (Recognition and Enforcement) Act, 1961 as having reciprocal provisions for enforcement of Indian awards.  The countries are Austria, Botswana, Bulgaria, Central African Republic, Chile, Cuba, Czechslovak Socialist Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Arab Republic of Egypt, Finland, France, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Republic of Korea, Malagasy Republic, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, The Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, USSR, UK, United Republic of Tanzania, and USA.

It may be noted that the Notifications declaring these countries to have provided reciprocal arrangements is valid even under the 1996 Act, in view of Section 82(2)(b) of the 1996 Act which provides: "(2) Notwithstanding such repeal-...(b) all rules made and notifications published, under the said enactments [Arbitration (Protocol and Convention) Act, 1937, Arbitration Act, 1940, and Foreign Awards (Recognition and Enforcement) Act, 1961] shall, to the extent to which they are not repugnant to this Act, be deemed respectively to have been made or issued under this Act." [fn. 45, p. 2296, Justice Bachawat's Law of Arbitration & Conciliation (5th ed. 2010)]

Considering the availability of the notified territories in the public domain, ambiguities, if at all, should have arisen in respect of territories notified subsequent to the enactment of the 1996 Act. Consequently, an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 dt. 22.05.2013 was given to the Ministry of External Affairs seeking reply on the list of territories notified under Section 44(b) of the 1996 Act. The Ministry forwarded the said application to the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice on 08.07.2013. It took more than two months for the Department to find out the territories under Section 44(b) of the 1996 Act. As per the Reply dt. 16.09.2013, the Notified countries are Singapore, Malaysia, Canada and Australia.

The CPIO could not find the notification number for the Notification of Australia. The Reply can be accessed from here.

It may be noted that on 19.03.2012, the Department of Legal Affairs had notified China, Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR as territories under Section 44(b) (See, MANU/LAFF/2012) . However, the CPIO has not disclosed the same. 

14 comments:

Tanya Jain said...

Australia was notified vide S.O. 2252 (E) dated September 23, 2008

Badrinath Srinivasan said...

Tanya, thanks for the info. Do you have a copy of the notification?

Unknown said...

http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2015/164985.pdf, Mauritius was also added on 13th july 2015.

Mahesh Ghanekar said...

What about France?

Badrinath Srinivasan said...

The list of jurisdictions include France.

Mahesh Ghanekar said...

What about France

Mahesh Ghanekar said...

Thanks Srinivasan Sir But I wanted a notification where-under France has been declared as a reciprocating territory under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. And also a notification under section 44A of the CPC if France has been declared as a reciprocating territory under CPC.

Unknown said...

Hi, Badrinath!
You say these countries were notified under Section 2 of the 1961 Act, so mentioned. The archives of the Gazette only show the existence of this act, without any mention of these countries. Perhaps these countries were notified to be adhering to the NYC in exclusive, seperate notifications? Even that is not reflecting in the archives.


I was wondering where Justice Bachawat must have found such a list to begin with! Help, if you can.

Unknown said...

Hi, Badrinath!
You say these countries were notified under Section 2 of the 1961 Act, so mentioned. The archives of the Gazette only show the existence of this act, without any mention of these countries. Perhaps these countries were notified to be adhering to the NYC in exclusive, seperate notifications? Even that is not reflecting in the archives.


I was wondering where Justice Bachawat must have found such a list to begin with! Please help, if you are equipped and willing

Badrinath Srinivasan said...

Dear Mahesh and Sanlap, firstly thanks for commenting and sorry for not replying earlier.
Mahesh, I do not have the notification with me. That is why I did not upload it. I took the list from the commentary noted in the post.

Sanlap, honestly, I am not sure about the contents of those notifications at all. I just compiled what I could find on the issue and also added the information I obtained under the RTI Act. Btw, have there been any update after 2013, when I wrote the post? Have countries been added?

Badrinath Srinivasan said...

Dear Deven, I didn't notice your comment earlier. Thanks for the link. Very useful.

Anonymous said...

Please provide me notification for Sweden

Unknown said...

is there a list of countries notified as reciprocating under s 44 of the arbitration and conciliation act?


Vivek said...

Is Vietnam Notified by Central Government under Section 44(1)(b)?