KKV's Proposal to Set up Four Apex Non-Constitutional Appellate Courts

Yesterday's The Hindu contained the first part of Senior Advocate, KK Venugopal's proposal for divesting the Supreme Court of its ordinary appellate functions and instead make it solely the apex court on constitutional matters. KKV also proposes the establishment of four Non-constitutional final appellate courts in different parts of India.

Link to the first part of the article was given in yesterday's post. The second part of the article can be accessed from here. Law Resource India blog has posted KKV's RK Jain Memorial Lecture titled  "Towards a Holistic Restructuring of the Supreme Court of India", where KKV had mooted this proposal.

The Law Commission report in which similar proposal was made can be accessed from here.

News and Opinions

Today's The Hindu contains an editorial by senior advocate Mr. KK Venugopal on the need for restricting the functions of the Supreme Court of India as a mere constitutional court.

Economic Times reports that the judgement in RIL-RNRL gas dispute might be delivered by the Supreme Court sometime next week. We energy law guys are eagerly awaiting the decision as it would have a great impact on the exploration and production industry.

Another important news for the downstream petroleum industry and the crores of Indians is that an Empowered Group of Ministers would be deciding within a fortnight on whether to free prices of petrol and diesel from government control. 

Two Chief Justices of India Give Contradictory Evidence as to Indian Law

Shashoua v. Sharma is an interesting decision. Its a must read for those who want to know the (ill?-)effects of Venture v. Satyam (where the Supreme Court decided that it could set aside an arbitral award passed in international commercial arbitration held outside India). Apart from this very obvious aspect of the case, there is another notable aspect to the case. The English court hearing the case had to find out what the law in India was on a particular issue. As is well known, a question regarding foreign law is a question of fact, and not of law, and courts employ expert evidence to find out what the foreign law is. In Shashoua v. Sharma, two retired Chief Justices of India had given conflicting evidence on what the Indian law was on that particular issue!!!!

Recent Developments in Arbitratration

Two developments in arbitration worth noting:

1) In a recent judgement, the Supreme Court has effectively negated extension of arbitration to a non-signatory affiliate which had not consented to the arbitration agreement. In this judgement, it was contended that corporate veil had to be lifted and the arbitration agreement must be extended to that non-signatory affiliate. The court rejected this contention.

2) Law and Legal Developments Blog contains a post which provides the link to an article in the www.barandbench.com on a recent case on amendment of pleadings in petitions for setting aside arbitral awards. In the said case, it was held that no amendment of petition is allowed for adding additional grounds for setting aside arbitral awards beyond three months from the date of receipt of arbitral award. The point which the judgement makes is that the time within which a party can amend its petition to set aside award cannot be more than the time within which a party would be entitled to challenge the award.

A comment off-the-cuff on the second case: Supposing I challenge an award under, say, S. 34(2)(a)(iii) [lack of proper notice of appointment of arbitrator or of arbitral proceedings etc. The ninety day period has expired and one fine day I come across new evidence of an arbitrator accepting bribe from the other party. Would I be allowed to challenge the arbitral award on this new ground? Would not the public policy of India [see, Explanation to S. 34(2)(b)(ii)] be violated if the court disallows me from challenging the arbitral award on this new ground?