ELP Arbitration Weekly Update

This week, we take a look at the Bombay High Court’s (“HC”) judgment in in the case of Suman Baburao Thapa v. Jigar K. Mehta and Ors. In this case, the HC was faced with a petition challenging the dismissal of a Section 8 application under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 for referral of certain disputes to arbitration. The HC set aside the dismissal order and referred the dispute to arbitration, notwithstanding the fact that one of the respondents in the suit before the lower court was not party to the arbitration agreement. We also discuss how the HC appears to have implicitly affirmed certain principles relating to the timeline in which written statements or Section 8 applications must be filed.