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.