News Type: Event

On May 24, 2023, our faculty colleagues Sahana Ramesh and Sharada Shindhe will discuss the consultation paper prepared by them titled ‘Making India an Arbitration Hub: Does India Need a Separate Law for International Arbitration’.

Abstract

This paper examines whether India needs a separate arbitration law for international commercial arbitration. To do this, we consider both factors like legislative provisions and their interpretation by courts, as well as systemic factors that contribute to the popularity of a jurisdiction as an arbitral seat. We analyze whether the domestic and international commercial arbitration laws in India, found in Parts I and II of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act of 1996, pose any challenges in conducting arbitration and enforcing foreign awards in India, leading to increased judicial intervention. We start by examining the structure of the 1996 Act and how Parts I and II relate to each other. Our analysis considers whether this distinction has made the arbitration process easier in India and made it a preferred location for arbitration. We also look into the many overlaps between Parts I and II that have resulted in greater judicial oversight and how judicial interpretations have helped resolve some of these overlaps while others remain unresolved. Additionally, we discuss parliament’s role in amending the legislation and clarifying the application of Parts I and II. The paper also examines the position in other countries on similar issues, and considers the approaches taken in those countries. The foreign jurisdictions considered are nations where institutional arbitration is prioritized. This paper investigates the factors that have contributed to their popularity.

The Moot Court Society, a student run society at NLSIU, along with Trilegal, a leading corporate law firm, are organizing Edition XVI of the National Law School-Trilegal International Arbitration Moot (NLSTIAM) in collaboration with India’s leading law firm Trilegal. The moot will be held from 18th to 21st May 2023.

About NLSTIAM

NLSTIAM is NLSIU’s pioneering initiative to increase student engagement with international arbitration law and practice. As South Asia’s largest arbitration moot, it provides students in India and neighbouring countries with a unique opportunity to gain a working understanding of arbitration through a simulated version of arbitral proceedings. The Moot has steadily garnered a reputation as one which deals with the most cutting-edge issues in
contemporary arbitration law and has attracted participation from India and the world. It holds the distinguished achievement of being the largest arbitration moot in South Asia.

In the past, the Grand Finals at NLSTIAM have been judged by several eminent figures in international arbitration, including the likes of Prof. Martin Hunter, Justice BN Srikrishna, Mr Steven Finizio, Mr Devashish Krishan, Ms Sophie Nappert, Dr Gary Bell and Mr Nish Shetty amongst many others.

Panelists

Our Adjudicatory Panel for the Finals comprises:
1) Justice A.S. Oka, Judge at the Supreme Court of India.
2) Mr Steven Finizio, Partner (International Arbitration) at Wilmer Hale, London.
3) Dr Friedrich Rosenfeld, Global Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU Paris.
4) Ms Shwetha Bidhuri, Director & Head (South Asia) at SIAC.

The case-study drafting committee for this edition comprises also features illustrious practitioners in the field:
1) Mr Niranjan Venkatesan, Barrister at One Essex Court, London.
2) Mr Arish Bharucha, Partner, Chair of the India Group at Howard Kennedy.
3) Mr Vignesh Ramakrishnan, Associate Legal Manager at ITC.

The problem deals with intricate matters involving International Commercial Arbitration law. Our sponsors for the event are:
1) Trilegal, one of India’s leading corporate law firms (Title Sponsor)
2) SCC Online, the legal research database (Media Partner)
3) Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), a global non-profit institution (Associate Sponsor)
4) WilmerHale, an international law firm (Associate Sponsor)

We hope to see eager participation from universities across India and the globe. With this, we welcome all the participants to the NLSTIAM and wish them the best of luck!

For more details, visit www.nlstiam.info

 

 

The Moot Court Society, a student run society at NLSIU, along with Trilegal, a leading corporate law firm, are organizing the VI Edition of the National Law School-Trilegal International Arbitration Conference (NLSTIAC). The event is scheduled to be held from 12:30 pm to 5:00 pm on 18th May 2023 in the Krishnappa Memorial Hall at the NLSIU campus.

About the NLSTIAC

The NLSTIAC is an annual event that takes place alongside the National Law School Trilegal International Arbitration Moot (NLSTIAM). This year, the conference is held in collaboration with the National Law School Business Law Review (NLSBLR). The conference provides a unique opportunity for students, researchers, arbitration professionals, lawyers, and corporate firms to engage on contemporary issues impacting international arbitration in the ever-evolving legal and economic environment. The conference also offers participants the chance to engage with arbitration experts, academics, and professionals on these important themes. The conference aims to provide a platform for participants to engage in discussions and debates on these important themes and to learn from arbitration experts, academics, and professionals. The Conference will consist of two panel discussions.

The theme for discussion for Panel I of NLSTIAC is “Proper Law of Arbitration Agreements.” The panellists for Panel I discussion are:

1) Mr Steven Finizio, Partner (International Arbitration) at WilmerHale, London.
2) Mr Pallav Shukla, Partner (Dispute Resolution, White-Collar Crime) at Trilegal.
3) Ms Shruti Sabharwal, Partner (Dispute Resolution) at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas.
4) Mr Pramod Nair, Senior Advocate and leading Arbitration Practitioner.
5) Ms Shwetha Bidhuri, Director & Head (South Asia) at Singapore International Arbitration Centre.

The theme for Panel II’s discussion pertains to “Challenging an award based on the Tribunal’s Treatment of Evidence.” We have another stellar panel for this discussion comprising:

1) Prof. Friedrich Rosenfeld, Partner at Hanefeld in Hamburg and Global Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU in Paris.
2) Ms Tine Abraham, Partner (Dispute Resolution, Restructuring, Special Situations and Insolvency Arbitration) at Trilegal.
3) Mr Ganapathy Subbiah, Partner (Dispute Resolution) at Khaitan & Co.
4) Ms Shanelle Irani, Senior Associate (Litigation/Controversy and International Arbitration) at WilmerHale, London.

For any queries, please write to

NLS faculty member Dr. Ashna Singh will be speaking at a panel discussion on the book “Caste Pride: Battles for Equality in Hindu India” at the Bangalore International Centre on May 21, 2023. The book is authored by Mr. Manoj Mitta, a Delhi-based journalist focusing on law, human rights and social justice.

The session will begin with a performance by singer & filmmaker, Shabnam Virmani, followed by a presentation by the author, Manoj Mitta. This will be followed by the panel discussion with Manoj Mitta, Ashna Singh and Sudipto Mondal (Executive Editor, The News Minute), and moderated by Jayna Kothari (Senior Advocate and Co-founder of the Centre for Law and Policy Research). The event will take place from 5-7 pm.

Background (Source: BIC)

In the book, Caste Pride, the author Manoj Mitta examines the endurance and violence of the Hindu caste system through the lens of the law. Linking two centuries of legal reform with social movements, he unearths the characters, speeches, confusions and decisions that have shaped the war on caste, mitigating how this ancient institution discriminated between Hindus across the board. Where they could live, how they could dress, whether they could go to a shop, a stream, walk a street or mingle, enter a temple, whom and how they could marry, which scriptures applied to whom, whether their actions, innocent or criminal, would attract punishment or impunity?

Describing brilliantly the passage of Hinduism into its modern avatar, the book celebrates women and men across the caste spectrum—pioneers Savitribai Phule, M.C. Rajah, R. Veerian, B.R. Ambedkar, Periyar, Vithalbhai Patel and others—and outside of the caste system, such as non-Hindu legislators and administrators, including Maneckji Dadabhoy, William Bentinck and Lord Willingdon. It re-examines the positions of leading lights such as Motilal Nehru, Thomas Munro, Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari, and shows why caste prejudice cleaves to names like Madan Mohan Malviya and Surendra Nath Banerjea. Through these histories of reform, Mitta establishes that untouchability is merely the best-known aspect of varna, an elusive purity-based hierarchy that affects the freedoms of all.

To RSVP, please visit this page.

 

 

The Institute of Public Policy is organising the 3rd Sri. Hunasikote Abdul Ghaffar Annual Memorial Lecture on May 19, 2023 at 4 pm. The lecture will be delivered by our guest speaker Dr. A Narayana from Azim Premji University on the topic ‘Lingayats: Their Faith and Vote in Karnataka.’

About the Lecture Series

This memorial lecture was initiated by the Institute of Public Policy with the support of Prof. Adbul Aziz, Chair on Religious Minorities, NLSIU in memory of his father Sri. Hunasikote Abdul Ghaffar. Mr. Ghaffar passed away in 1982 in Hunasikote at the age of 74.

The first lecture in this series was delivered by Prof. Karkala Seetharam on April 3, 2019 on the topic “Human Rights as Public Policy.” The second lecture was delivered by Shri. Cyril Diengdoh, IAS, on April 4, 2022 on the topic “Challenges of NREGA in Sixth Schedule Areas.”

About the Speaker:

Dr. Narayana is currently with Azim Premji University where he teaches Political Philosophy and Indian Politics, Law and Governance and Governance Challenges in India.

He has over two decades of experience in the media, academics and consultancy. With a master’s in economics, he started his career as a journalist with the Bangalore-based English daily, Deccan Herald, and switched to academics after obtaining his doctorate from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, United Kingdom, with the Ford International Fellowship. Worked as Associate Professor at the School of Media Studies, Manipal University, Manipal and as Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Bangalore. He was the Karnataka State Coordinator for the World Bank’s Land Governance Assessment Framework and a consultant for the Karnataka Government’s High-Power Committee on Restructuring the Governance of Bangalore City. He was also a member of the Election Commission of India’s technical committee on electoral literacy. He writes regularly in Kannada and English newspapers.

NLS faculty member Preeti Pratishruti Dash’s Opinion piece has been published in The Hindu titled, “A Court recall that impacts the rights of the accused.” The piece looks into the Supreme Court’s decision to recall its own order in Ritu Chhabaria vs Union of India “which would deviate from the fundamental principles of criminal procedure.”

Excerpt: 

The Supreme Court of India’s order on May 1, seeking to recall its own decision in Ritu Chhabaria vs Union of India upon the insistence of the Solicitor-General of India, Tushar Mehta, that central investigation agencies were ‘facing difficulties’, has caused concern among legal professionals. Besides the questionable legality of the Court ‘recalling’ its own decision, what is of concern too is how this order would impact the rights of the accused to be released from custody. On May 12, in its interim order, the Supreme Court clarified that courts could grant default bail independent of and without relying on the Ritu Chhabaria judgment. However, the Court’s decision to suspend the rights of defendants in criminal cases would lead to further erosion of the constitutional rights of the accused and deviate from fundamental principles of criminal procedure…

The online link of the article is available here.

 

 

Members of the NLS Queer Alliance (NLSQA), a student collective at NLSIU, will be speaking at the Bangalore International Center on 20th May from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.  The session titled “Worlds Words Weave: Queer Explorations towards Constructing Reality on Our Own Terms” will be an interactive one with the conversation linking anecdotes, polemics, popular culture, legalese and semantics in general. The session will entail 5 speakers from the NLSQA talking about words like family, joy, etc and their meaning to queer individuals.

NLSQA Speaks | About the event 

“Through this conversation, we seek to explain what words mean to the queer community and highlight how language has historically deprived the queer community of participating in public discourse. While at the same time, we shall endeavor to reclaim and redefine these words.

The Queer community has been thrusted into hypervisibility following the widespread publicity of the Marriage Equality petitions in the Supreme Court. The hearings saw the usage of many terms, concepts, and identities integral to the Queer experience. However, the meanings of these words got distorted and confused as they went through the grapevine of petitions, media coverage, and popular discourse.

Language and vocabulary are important tools in any social movement. It sits at the epicenter of any hegemony. The pervasive power of language is visible in how we write our laws and our stories. When the speakers of the language cannot find words to describe themselves, it is imperative that we embrace new words and the worlds that they weave. The fight for the recognition of the rights of queer people seeks to challenge this semantic and linguistic cis-heteronormativity.

Through this session, the NLSQA seeks to reach out to the wider community, highlight the power of language, showcase the queer usage of everyday words, explain what certain words mean to queer individuals, and most importantly, draw links between pop culture, the law and colloquial language.”

About the speakers:

• Dhawal M, Convenor, NLS Queer Alliance, and third-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student
• Sarthak Virdi, Student & Member, NLS Queer Alliance, and second-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student

If you are interested in attending the event, please RSVP here.

 

In our next faculty seminar on 17th May, Dr. Arul George Scaria will discuss a report he prepared for the Delhi High Court.

Abstract of the Report:

Sec. 52(1)(za) of the Copyright Act 1957 is an important exception provision under the Indian copyright law. It exempts from copyright infringement liability public performance and communication to the public of certain types of copyrighted works in the course of bonafide religious ceremonies and official ceremonies. The explanation provided with the provision mentions that ‘religious ceremony’ includes marriage procession and “other social festivities associated with a marriage”. But the scope and limitations of this exception provision remained largely untested. Recently, a copyright infringement case was initiated before the Delhi High Court by Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), which issues licenses for public performance of sound recordings assigned to it by copyright holders, against Lookpart Exhibitions and Events Private Limited (Lookpart), which provides event management services for different social events including weddings. PPL argued that Lookpart was using the sound recordings for social events, including weddings, without obtaining any license from PPL. Lookpart relied on the exception provided under Sec. 52(1)(za) of the Copyright Act, 1957 to argue that use of sound recordings during marriage ceremonies or other social events connected with marriage does not amount to infringement of copyright under Sec. 51 of the Copyright Act 1957. As music is an integral part of marriage ceremonies and festivities associated with marriages in India and as the questions of law involved in the matter has enormous implications for creative artists and copyright owners on one hand and users of copyrighted works, including organisations involved in the management of weddings and other social events on the other hand, the court appointed an independent expert on the matter to examine the scope and historical context of Sec. 52(1)(za). This was also important in view of the fact that not much academic deliberations or judicial opinions were available on the provision, in spite of its socio-cultural significance in the Indian context. This report, prepared by the independent expert appointed by the Court, examines in detail the social, cultural, historical and legal dimensions of Sec. 52(1)(za). The report was submitted to the Court on July 5, 2022.

On May 18, there will be a Public Lecture by our guest speaker, Mr. Manoj Mitta, who will be delivering a talk on his recently published book, Caste Pride: Battles for Equality in Hindu India (Westland 2023).

About the Speaker:

Manoj Mitta is a Delhi-based journalist focusing on law, human rights and social justice. A law graduate from Hyderabad, he has worked with the Times of India, the Indian Express and IndiaToday. Mitta has written two critically acclaimed books on impunity for mass violence: When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath, co-authored with H.S. Phoolka (2007), and The Fiction of Fact-finding: Modi and Godhra (2014). His article on caste was published in 2007 in Writing a Nation: An Anthology of Indian Journalism, edited by Nirmala Lakshman.

Book Abstract :

In this masterful volume, Manoj Mitta uses the lens of the law in an eye-opening examination of the endurance and violence of the Hindu caste system. Linking centuries of legal reform with social movements, he unearths the characters, speeches, confusions and decisions that have shaped the battle on caste hierarchy into one that seeks to mitigate the ways in which this ancient system discriminated between Hindus in their daily lives: where they could live, how they could dress, whether they could go to a shop, a stream, walk a street or mingle, enter a temple, who and how they could marry, whether their actions, innocent or criminal, would attract punishment or impunity.

Describing brilliantly the passage of Hinduism into its modern avatar, the book celebrates women and men across the caste spectrum—leading lights Savitribai Phule, M.C. Rajah, R. Veerian, B.R. Ambedkar, Vithalbhai Patel and others—and outside of the caste system, such as non-Hindu legislators and administrators including Maneckji Dadabhoy, William Bentinck and Lord Willingdon. It re-examines the positions of stalwarts such as Motilal Nehru, Thomas Munro, Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari, and shows why caste prejudice cleaves to names like Madan Mohan Malviya and Surendra Nath Banerjea.

Through these histories of reform, Mitta establishes that untouchability is merely the best-known aspect of the caste system, an elusive purity-based hierarchy that affects the freedoms of all. Studded with groundbreaking discoveries and stunning insights, Caste Pride is at once moving, enlightening and transformative.

The event is open to all. We look forward to seeing you at the session!

On 3rd May 2023, the faculty seminar will be by guest speaker, Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi, who will be delivering a talk on his recently published book, ‘The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces’.

About the Speaker: 

Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi is a third-term Member of Parliament, representing the Pilibhit constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In his last book, ‘A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future through her Villages’ (published in November 2018), Shri Gandhi presented an alternative approach to mainstream ideas of rural development, which despite their many achievements have certain inherent limitations. Shri Gandhi has published two volumes of poetry – ‘The Otherness of Self’ and ‘Stillness’ – that have been well received. He also writes widely in English as well as several regional language newspapers including The Hindu, The Economic Times, Amar Ujala, Lokmat, and Bartaman.

About the Book: 

For most urban Indians, the past few years have been unsettling—we have seen neighbourhoods locked down for months during a pandemic, increasing the daily challenges of earning a living as well as of access to good healthcare and education. Inflation has ravaged the land with spiralling prices of food, rent and transport. Our cities are hard to live in; lacking basic amenities, while being
unaesthetic and discordant with our civilization.

As economic growth takes priority, questions about liveability and meaningful employment arise, along with concerns about the deteriorating law and order. In blindly and poorly aping Western
models, our cities homogenize, losing their character, their identity and their soul. Meanwhile, climate change is no longer a mythical or distant possibility but a distinct and immediate reality. A typical city must now cope with extreme temperatures, both flooding and water shortages and abysmal air quality. These can no longer be treated as threats but as certainties to be planned for.

The Indian Metropolis seeks to begin a national conversation on these issues and suggests ways to turn our cities into enabling, energizing environments geared towards enhancing the daily life of the average city dweller.” (Source: Rupa Publications)