Impact of Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 and Recent Amendments on Construction Industry

In India, in ancient times, people often voluntarily submitted their disputes to a group of wise men called the Panchayat for a dispute resolution. This soon germinated into a whole system of arbitration. The Arbitration Act of 1940 was based largely on multiple opportunities being awarded to litigants to approach the court for intervention. As the judicial system in the country was extremely sluggish, it was found that such a provision only led to further delays in the judicial process. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act of 1996 was introduced after many discrepancies were observed in the Act of 1940. The main aim of the 1996 act was to bring about a legal framework for fair and just settlement of disputes arising in International Commercial Arbitration. In order to streamline the process of Arbitration further, a proposal was submitted to an expert committee to review and make suggestions. The study deals with is arbitration in the construction industry. The amendments are analysed by a comparative study of the 1996 and 2014 Act, the cases that led to the same, opinions from the industry which directs to understand the drawbacks of the Act (1996) and assess the amendments made in 2014, to gauge if the outcome of a case is different if the amendments of 2014 are applied on a previously closed case.