Introduction
The growth of international commercial arbitration in India has been a continuous tug-of-war between the legislative purpose of minimizing judicial intervention and the constitutional obligation of the courts to avoid injustice and unconscionable conduct. However, 2025 marked a paradigm shift in this jurisprudence, spurred by the Delhi High Court ruling in Engineering Projects (India) Ltd. v. MSA Global LLC. The Delhi High Court, relying on its inherent powers under Sections 9 and 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, acted as a ‘watchful guardian’, restrained the ICC arbitration seated in Singapore, and made ‘procedural integrity’ a threshold requirement. Under this emerging framework, even a single non-disclosure by an arbitrator may be treated as an “incurable foundational fallacy.”
This raises a critical question: whether such judicial involvement reinforces the credibility of arbitration or dilutes the long-standing principle of minimal judicial intervention, thereby threatening India’s aspirations to become a predictable arbitration hub in the future. This article examines the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Engineering Projects and analyses the extent to which courts can intervene to safeguard procedural integrity in international commercial arbitration.
The Factual Matrix and the Erosion of Jurisdictional Restraint
India’s approach to anti-arbitration injunctions has long been shaped by the judicial restraint from BALCO’s “territorial firewall,” whereby foreign-seated arbitrations were excluded from Part I of the Act. This position later evolved through cases such as McDonald’s and Himachal Sorang., where an exception was recognised in “rare and exceptional” instances of “vexatious or oppressive” conduct.
This 2025 judgment, however, shows a radical departure. The dispute pertained to EPIL, a PSU under the Ministry of Heavy Industries, and MSA Global LLC in Oman. The contract stipulated that disputes would be resolved through ICC Arbitration in accordance with the ICC Rules, with the seat in Singapore, but conferred jurisdiction on the courts at New Delhi. When Mr. Yeap was appointed as a co-arbitrator in 2023, he declared that “he had nothing to disclose.” Later, in 2024, a Gujarat High Court judgment revealed that he had previously served as a co-arbitrator in an MSA Global matter. Although the ICC Court acknowledged the involvement as “regrettable,” it allowed Mr. Yeap to continue, prompting EPIL to approach the Delhi High Court.
Jurisprudential Fault Lines: Deconstructing the Delhi High Court’s Assumption of Supervisory Jurisdiction
Although the concern was to safeguard procedural integrity, the Court’s assumption of supervisory jurisdiction over a foreign-seated arbitration, despite parallel proceedings, has shaken BALCO’s “territorial firewall”. This reasoning ignores the critical distinction between the general plenary jurisdiction of civil courts and the specialised statutory regime governing arbitration, e.g., Section 5 of the Act. By resorting to the CPC, the Court has ignored the well-established position that the Arbitration Act is a “self-contained code,” which by necessary implication precludes the exercise of inherent powers in relation to the Act.
Moreover, Article 14 of the ICC Rules designates the ICC Court as the competent body for arbitrator challenges – a body that had already examined the issue of non-disclosure and found no “justifiable doubts” as to impartiality.[1] Nevertheless, the Delhi High Court interfered in the matter, assuming the role of an “unauthorized appellate body” over a foreign institution, without identifying any manifest error of law or procedural irregularity in the ICC’s process.
Non-Disclosure is not Disqualification
Central to the EPIL ruling is the question of what consequences attach to an arbitrator’s failure to disclose material prior engagements. The Delhi High Court treated Mr. Yeap’s non-disclosure as a foundational defect vitiating the entire arbitral proceedings. This treatment 23must be examined against the 2024 IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration, which represent the most authoritative soft-law instrument on this subject.
The IBA Guidelines draw a clear distinction between the threshold for disclosure and the threshold for disqualification. General Standard 3(g) of the 2024 IBA Guidelines provides that non-disclosure by the arbitrator does not necessarily imply a conflict of interest or disqualification. The Delhi High Court’s approach, however, does not make such a distinction, resulting in a near-automatic process from non-disclosure to disqualification and ultimately to injunctive relief. This position does not reconcile with the objective standard test prescribed by the Guidelines. The existence of conflict is determined not from the personal perspective of the arbitrator, but from that of a reasonable third party who is aware of the pertinent facts.
Comparative Analysis: Anti-Arbitration Injunctions in England, Singapore, and India
England
English courts have maintained a sharp distinction between anti-suit injunctions (restraining court proceedings in breach of an arbitration agreement) and anti-arbitration injunctions (restraining arbitral proceedings themselves). In Halliburton Co. v. Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd., the Supreme Court held that non-disclosure alone does not establish apparent bias and made no per se disqualification rule.
The principle at stake is that English courts will not interfere with the arbitral process, but will enforce the arbitration agreement itself, rather than assuming the role of overseeing the arbitral proceedings. This stands in contrast to the EPIL approach, which invoked inherent powers under the CPC to assume a supervisory role that the ‘lex arbitri’ expressly allocates to the seat court.
Singapore
When EPIL sought proceedings in Delhi despite the Singapore seat, the Singapore High Court issued a permanent anti-suit injunction against the Delhi suit. The Singapore court’s reasoning was simple: the seat was Singapore, the Model Law gave supervisory jurisdiction to the courts of the seat, and EPIL’s challenge to Mr. Yeap had already been considered under the ICC Rules and still had avenues of appeal left in Singapore. In Singapore’s eyes, EPIL had remedies – it simply did not like the ones available to it and went forum shopping for a different answer.
India: A Divergent Trajectory
Rather than grounding its intervention in any provision of the Arbitration Act itself, the Court resorted to the Code of Civil Procedure – Sections 9 and 151, invoking the court’s residual power to do justice.[2] The Court drew on the constitutional test from Dhulabhai v. State of Madhya Pradesh and held that civil court jurisdiction survives wherever fundamental norms of justice are at stake[3], treating the Arbitration Act as merely another statute rather than a self-contained code. Once a court is prepared to bypass the Act under the CPC, the self-contained code doctrine is substantially undermined.
Conclusion
The Division Bench’s affirmation of the Single Judge’s order in this case has pushed the controversy beyond a mere arbitrator-disclosure dispute. By upholding the anti-arbitration injunction, the Delhi High Court not only considered Mr. Yeap’s non-disclosure to be a serious procedural flaw but also agreed that New Delhi, and not Singapore, was the juridical seat of arbitration. This is where the ruling gets most contentious and divisive. Once the Court held that India was the seat, it used that finding to assert supervisory jurisdiction and reject the conclusive effect of Singapore’s anti-suit injunction. The reasoning thus appears circular and arguably tautological: Delhi was the seat; it could override Singapore, and Delhi said that it could override Singapore because it was the seat.
The matter now lies before the Supreme Court.[4] It is certainly not wrong for the Court to be interested in the question of deliberate non-disclosure, but the bigger question is whether Indian courts have the inherent jurisdiction under the CPCto supervise or restrict a foreign-seated arbitration. The Delhi HC’s reasoning could set a precedent for the door being reopened that was slammed by BALCO and the amendments in 2015. In the past, Bhatia International left Indian courts with the discretion to intervene in foreign-seated arbitrations between Indian parties. BALCO restored the territorial principle by tying supervisory jurisdiction to the seat. If EPIL is upheld through the CPC route, this form of judicial overreach may re-emerge in another guise.
The ruling is also unfavourable for the ongoing reform process in India. The draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024, aims to remove ambiguity from the principle of the seat of arbitration, promote institutional arbitration, recognise emergency arbitration, and minimise judicial intervention. EPIL moves in the opposite direction by allowing general civil court powers to bypass the specialised framework of the Arbitration Act. This is a disconcerting indication for a jurisdiction that aims to position itself as an arbitration hub: the process may not necessarily be shielded from court intervention even where the proceedings are seated overseas.
The consequences are just as dire on the ground. The Delhi High Court order does not have a binding effect on Singapore courts or the ICC tribunal. Singapore has already restrained the Indian proceedings. This results in what Gary Born calls “limping arbitration”, which halts in one jurisdiction and proceeds in another. Such competing orders result in higher costs, cause delays, and undermine the confidence that international arbitration is intended to provide.[5]
References
[1] ICC Rules of Arbitration, art. 14 (2021).
[2] Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, §§ 9, 151.
[3] Dhulabhai v. State of Madhya Pradesh, A.I.R. 1969 S.C. 78 (India).
[4] Supreme Court hears appeal against Delhi HC verdict, Bar and Bench (Feb. 25, 2026).
[5] Gary B Born, International Arbitration (3rd edn, Kluwer Law International 2021) 3680-85.