Deck: A quiet-on-paper week for fresh litigation produced an unusually consequential run of institutional news - a public arbitrator-disclosure register proposed by the Chief Justice of India, three citable High Court rulings on damages, MSME claims and judicial restraint, and the first real judicial debate on AI's place in Indian arbitration. Together they sketch an ecosystem professionalising in public rather than through backroom reform.

It was a week in which India's arbitration story was written less by a single blockbuster ruling than by a string of connected developments: the Chief Justice of India closing India ADR Week 2026 with a concrete proposal for an arbitrator-disclosure register; the Supreme Court reinforcing how far courts may go in second-guessing a tribunal's own jurisdiction; three High Courts handing down practical, citable rulings on liquidated damages, MSME claims and judicial restraint; and, for the first time on this scale, sitting and former judges debating openly what role artificial intelligence should - and should not - play in arbitration and forensic evidence. Read together, the week points to an ecosystem that is professionalising in public, on the record, rather than through backroom reform.

The Week at a Glance

Two set-piece events bookended the week and shaped most of what got covered. India ADR Week 2026 - the sixth edition, organised by the Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration (MCIA) across Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi from 7 to 11 September - closed with a keynote from Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant. Days later, the India Digital ADR Summit 2026, hosted by the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) in Gandhinagar from 12 to 14 September, turned the spotlight onto AI in arbitration and the institutional future of mediation. In between, the Supreme Court and three High Courts delivered a cluster of rulings that, taken together, tell disputes lawyers a clear story: Indian courts continue to narrow the space for judicial interference in arbitration, even as they sharpen the rules on when parties - including non-signatories such as guarantors - can be pulled into it.

One structural note for anyone tracking listed matters: the Supreme Court and Delhi-based tribunals, including the NCLT and NCLAT, were closed on 11 September on account of the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit in Delhi, with matters listed that day deferred to fresh dates.

CJI Surya Kant's Closing Keynote: A Public Register for Arbitrator Disclosures

The single most consequential remarks of the week came from the Chief Justice of India, who delivered the closing keynote of India ADR Week 2026 in New Delhi on 11 September. His core proposal was a cross-institutional public disclosure register for arbitrators - a transparent repository of professional information, including track record, that parties and counsel could consult while constituting a tribunal, rather than relying on reputation passed on through closed professional circles. As the Chief Justice put it, counsel should be able to choose arbitrators the way any serious professional chooses a specialist - on the basis of a visible track record, not word of mouth.

This is not the Chief Justice's first outing on this theme. At the SIAC India Conference in August, he had already flagged arbitrator conflicts and caseload transparency as unresolved structural weaknesses in Indian institutional arbitration, and at the ICA's London International Disputes Week session earlier this year he floated joint Indo-UK arbitrator training and fast-track procedures. The throughline across all three appearances is the same: India's aspiration to become a preferred international arbitral seat, he has repeatedly said, depends less on further legislative reform and more on the predictability, efficiency and institutional credibility of the arbitral process itself.

For law firms and independent arbitrators, a public disclosure register - if it materialises - would be a significant practical change. It would put India in the company of other reform-minded seats that have moved to standardise arbitrator conflict disclosures, and it would give counsel and clients a data point that today depends almost entirely on informal referral networks. Institutions such as the MCIA, IAMC Hyderabad and the proposed GIFT City centre will be the natural homes for any such register, and expert-witness marketplaces are likely to face similar pressure for transparency in due course.

Choice of Law for Arbitration Agreements: The Disortho Question Resurfaces

Carried over from GHAC Arbitration Week (which closed in the first days of the month) but still generating fresh commentary this week is a doctrinal question that trips up drafters more often than most litigators expect: when a contract is silent, which law governs the arbitration agreement itself, as distinct from the main contract? A panel including Senior Counsel V.K. Rajah, Darius Khambata, Thomas Williams KC, Professor Sundra Rajoo and Nish Shetty mapped how England, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, France, Malaysia and India each answer that question - a live issue since England's Arbitration Act 2025 introduced a seat-default rule (Section 6A, in force since August 2025) and Malaysia followed with its own mirroring provision from January 2026.

India has not legislated a default rule. Instead, the Supreme Court's 2025 three-judge decision in Disortho S.A.S. v Meril Life Sciences applied the Sulamerica/Enka three-stage test - express choice, implied choice, closest connection - and found a strong implied choice of Indian law from a whole-agreement clause, even though the seat of arbitration was outside India. Darius Khambata traced the Indian position back through NTPC v Singer, Bhatia International, Venture Global and BALCO to reach that point.

Why this matters in practice: the choice of law governing the arbitration agreement can decide arbitrability itself, since India carves out certain categories of dispute - oppression and mismanagement claims are a commonly cited example - that other seats such as Singapore treat as arbitrable. A generic clause stating that the contract is governed by Indian law in all respects no longer reliably answers the narrower question of which law governs the arbitration agreement. Until India follows England and Malaysia in legislating a default rule, the safest course for drafters is to state the governing law of the arbitration agreement expressly and separately from the governing law of the substantive contract.

Supreme Court Reinforces Tribunal Autonomy: The GVV Constructions Ruling

On 8 September, just ahead of this reporting window but still dominating commentary through the week, the Supreme Court delivered its ruling in M/s GVV Constructions Private Limited v. The Union of India (2026 INSC 976), a case with direct relevance to the construction and infrastructure disputes that make up a large share of Indian institutional arbitration's caseload. The dispute arose from the termination of a railway-track-doubling contract with South Central Railway; the appellant argued that the termination, and associated claims, fell outside the tribunal's jurisdiction as 'excepted matters' under the works contract.

The Bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe held that whether a particular claim is covered by, or falls outside, an excepted-matters clause is a question for the Arbitral Tribunal to decide under Section 16 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 - not a question for a court, even at the wider appointment-stage jurisdiction under Section 11. Just as significantly, the Court held that a High Court exercising writ-appellate jurisdiction cannot pre-determine or constrain a tribunal's Section 16 competence to rule on its own jurisdiction, including on the arbitrability of matters like contract termination.

For attorneys advising on infrastructure and construction contracts with excepted-matters or similar carve-out clauses, the ruling closes off an avenue some parties have used to keep termination and related disputes out of arbitration altogether by contesting jurisdiction at the court stage. It also reinforces a consistent theme in Indian arbitration jurisprudence this year: tribunals, not courts, get the first and often the final word on their own jurisdiction.

When Does an Arbitration Clause Bind a Non-Signatory Guarantor?

Decided the same day as GVV Constructions, National Skill Development Corporation v. Surya Wires Private Limited & Ors. (2026 INSC 977) tackled a different but related question: can an arbitration clause in a loan agreement bind a personal guarantor who never signed that agreement in their personal capacity? The same Bench - Justices Narasimha and Aradhe - held that it can, where the personal guarantee is expressly made an integral part of the loan transaction.

The Court's reasoning rested on Section 7(5) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, which allows an arbitration clause to be incorporated by reference. Because the personal guarantee was executed as a mandatory pre-disbursement condition and was expressly deemed to form part of the loan agreement, the two documents formed a single composite transaction, and the arbitration clause in the loan agreement travelled with it - binding the guarantor to arbitrate disputes even though the guarantee document itself contained no separate arbitration clause.

This is a useful precedent for lenders, NBFCs and their counsel structuring composite lending transactions with separate guarantee instruments, and equally for guarantors' counsel assessing whether a client can be compelled into arbitration on the strength of a loan agreement they did not personally execute. The test the Court applied - integration into a single composite transaction, not merely commercial connection between documents - gives drafters a reasonably clear line to work with.

High Court Roundup: Damages, MSME Claims and Judicial Restraint

Three High Court rulings surfaced late in the week, each speaking to a different, recurring pain point for disputes counsel.

Madras High Court: an extension of time does not waive liquidated damages if the right was expressly reserved

In Ansaldo Energia S.p.A. & Anr. v. Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd., decided by the Madras High Court on 12 September, Justices P. Velmurugan and K. Govindarajan Thilakavadi dismissed a Section 37 appeal and upheld an arbitral award rejecting the contractor's argument that Neyveli Lignite Corporation's extensions of time for a thermal power expansion project amounted to a waiver of liquidated damages under Section 55(3) of the Contract Act. Because each extension letter expressly reserved NLC's right to levy liquidated damages, the notice requirement designed to protect a contractor from being misled about its exposure never arose.

This is a clean, citable precedent on a drafting point that recurs in nearly every delayed infrastructure contract: it is the wording of the extension-of-time letter, not merely the fact that an extension was granted, that decides whether liquidated-damages rights survive. Employers and contractors negotiating EOT letters on live projects should treat this as a template for what a reservation-of-rights clause needs to say.

Delhi High Court: MSME registration obtained after the fact cannot revive abandoned arbitration claims

In Shri Krishan Grit Co. v. Continental Engineering Corporation, also decided by the Delhi High Court on 12 September, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela held that registration under the MSME Development Act operates prospectively, applying the Supreme Court's reasoning in Silpi Industries v. Kerala SRTC. A supplier cannot use later-obtained MSME registration to reopen claims from an earlier arbitration that it had allowed to lapse by failing to file its Statement of Claim. The Court also clarified that jurisdiction under Section 18(5) of the MSME Act sits only with the Facilitation Council in the supplier's home state, with no overlapping jurisdiction across states.

The ruling is directly useful for attorneys advising subcontractors and suppliers who have looked to MSME registration as a late-stage forum-shopping option after an earlier claim has gone stale - that door is now more firmly shut.

Calcutta High Court: courts must exercise restraint before interfering in ongoing arbitration

In Bijay Saha v. Ajit Saha, decided by the Calcutta High Court on 11 September, Justices Ravi Kishan Kapur and Supratim Bhattacharya set aside a district court's Section 9 order that had restrained a sole arbitrator from hearing a pending correction application under Section 33. The Bench held that judicial intervention during an ongoing arbitration is limited to extremely urgent cases, invoking the kompetenz-kompetenz principle from N.N. Global v. Indo Unique Flame to require that jurisdictional objections go to the tribunal first.

This is a useful, quotable precedent against premature court intervention in live arbitrations, and it sits comfortably alongside the Supreme Court's GVV Constructions ruling on the same theme: courts, at every level, are being told to let tribunals decide their own jurisdiction before stepping in.

AI Enters the Arbitration Room: The NFSU Digital ADR Summit

The India Digital ADR Summit 2026, organised by NFSU's International Digital Dispute Resolution Centre in Gandhinagar from 12 to 14 September, produced the most concrete judicial commentary to date on artificial intelligence's place in Indian arbitration and forensic evidence - a subject Exlitem's readers in the technical and specialist-expert community will want to watch closely.

Justice Rajesh Bindal warned against what he called outsourcing human thinking to AI, while Gujarat Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal set out five principles for AI use in arbitration proceedings. Justice M.R. Shah called for dispute resolution to become faster and more affordable, and Additional Solicitor General R. Venkataramani, alongside Justice N.V. Anjaria, urged arbitrators handling AI-assisted material to be a sceptic, refute, verify - a direct reference to the risk of AI hallucination finding its way into submissions, expert reports or even tribunal reasoning if left unchecked.

On the summit's closing day, 14 September, former Gujarat Chief Justice Sonia Gokani used her keynote to shift the conversation from arbitration to mediation, setting out a roadmap for institutionalising mediation practice under the Mediation Act, 2023 - covering mediator accreditation, certified supervising-mediator panels, and specialised panels for disputes in areas such as intellectual property, life sciences, construction and information technology.

For Exlitem's audience, the practical takeaway is twofold. First, Indian judicial opinion on AI in arbitration is coalescing around caution rather than enthusiasm - verification and scepticism, not automation, is the emerging watchword, which should inform how counsel present AI-assisted analysis (including AI-assisted forensic and quantum work) before tribunals. Second, mediator specialisation by subject area is now an explicit institutional goal, which will matter for how expert witnesses and forensic specialists position themselves for referral into mediated, rather than purely arbitrated, disputes.

Mediation's Institutional Turn: The Mediation Council of India

Running alongside the Digital ADR Summit is a standing correction worth flagging for anyone following the Mediation Act, 2023 closely: the Mediation Council of India, provided for under Section 31(1) of the Act, was in fact constituted on 27 August 2026, with its headquarters in Delhi. Earlier reporting - based on a Lok Sabha answer from February 2026 - had suggested the Council remained unconstituted; that gap has now closed. The Council's mandate is to regulate mediation service providers, frame accreditation standards, and oversee the national mediation ecosystem, which gives institutional weight to Justice Gokani's professionalisation roadmap discussed above.

Taken together with the Digital ADR Summit's mediation content, this is the strongest signal yet that India's post-Mediation Act infrastructure is moving from statute to practice - accreditation bodies, specialised panels and a formal regulator are now either in place or being actively designed, roughly three years after the Act received assent.

What This Means for Disputes Attorneys and Expert Witnesses

Several practical threads run through the week's news. On drafting: both the Disortho governing-law question and the Ansaldo Energia extension-of-time ruling reward precision in contract language - the arbitration-agreement governing-law clause and the EOT reservation-of-rights wording are both places where a generic template creates real downstream risk. On forum strategy: the GVV Constructions, Bijay Saha and NSDC v. Surya Wires rulings together confirm that Indian courts at every level are consolidating around tribunal-first jurisdictional decision-making, including for non-signatories drawn in through composite transactions - a trend litigators should factor into early-stage strategy about where and how to contest jurisdiction. On MSME claims: the Delhi High Court's ruling closes off a specific tactical option for suppliers with lapsed claims, and should be flagged to clients considering MSME registration as a litigation strategy rather than a genuine business step. On institutional development: the CJI's disclosure-register proposal, the AI-governance commentary from the NFSU summit, and the Mediation Council's activation all point toward a more transparent, more specialised, and more heavily regulated ADR ecosystem over the next one to two years - firms and independent experts who get ahead of accreditation and disclosure norms now will be better placed as these become standard practice.

Looking Ahead

Watch for three things in the coming weeks: whether the CJI's disclosure-register proposal is picked up formally by MCIA, IAMC Hyderabad or the Arbitration Council of India; further detail on the Mediation Council of India's accreditation standards as the professionalisation agenda from the Digital ADR Summit is operationalised; and any follow-through on the Disortho governing-law question, since England and Malaysia's legislated seat-default rules leave India as a comparative outlier that practitioners and, potentially, the Law Ministry may look to address.

Takeaway

This week showed India's arbitration ecosystem reforming itself in public: a Chief Justice proposing real transparency tools, courts consolidating tribunal authority over jurisdiction, and judges openly debating the limits of AI in dispute resolution. For attorneys and expert witnesses, the message is consistent across every item - precision in drafting, tribunal-first jurisdictional strategy, and early alignment with emerging disclosure and accreditation standards will matter more, not less, as these reforms take hold.

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