(Nothing?) More on Reciprocal Arrangement Countries under the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996

We did a post about four years back on the countries which the Government has notified as having made reciprocal provisions for the enforcement of the New York Convention.We mentioned there that countries which were so notified under the Section 2 of the Foreign Awards (Recognition and Enforcement) Act, 1961 were: 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 (Justice Bachawat's Law of Arbitration & Conciliation (5th ed. 2010), P.2264 ff, 2296). We also mentioned that these notifications were valid even under the 1996 Act in view of Section 82(2)(b), which creates a fiction as if these notifications  were issued under the the 1996 Act.

In that post, we provided the links to the readers of notifications issued under the 1996 Act for Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, China, Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR. Most of this information were sourced through an RTI Application seeking information on the notifications under Section 44(b) [see the post]. But what about the territories mentioned above? These must have been notified under the 1961 Act. Although the previous Application would have included all the territories mentioned above, in view of the deeming fiction, we nevertheless filed another RTI Application seeking the list of territories notified under the 1961 Act. None of the territories mentioned in the aforesaid commentary found its place in the reply of the PIO. In fact, the notifications given in the decision were those issued under the 1996 Act and not the 1961 Act. The Reply can be accessed from here. 

In addition to the countries mentioned in the previous RTI application, Mauritius has been notified vide Notification dt. 13.07.2015. 

It is possible that the Ministry has failed to trace notifications of the territories mentioned in the commentary, such as France, Spain, Switzerland, USA, etc. If so, how do petitioners seeking enforcement of arbitral awards satisfy the court that requirements under Section 44(b) have been met? 

We spoke to some of the practitioners in the field. They say that none of the respondents had raised such an objection. Even if they raise such an objection, it would be possible to cite previous judgements where awards for such territories have been enforced. But the question is whether such an objection has been raised in the first place in those decisions? 

As we noted in the previous post, the PIO did not give accurate information in reply to the query for information on this issue. Therefore, in order to put an end to this issue, a court hearing an objection of failure to comply with Section 44(b) should issue notice to the Government seeking their reply. 

We've filed an appeal against the decision of the PIO and we will keep readers updated on the outcome of the appeal.