New Delhi: The Supreme Court is working on a proposal to build a court-annexed arbitration centre that will also house modern co-working space for young lawyers who are unable to afford chambers or personal offices during their initial years of practice, ThePrint has learnt.
Reliable sources from the top court told ThePrint that the plan has been discussed between Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and senior-most judges after they recently received final allotment of a new parcel of land, measuring around one-and-a-half acre, located in close proximity to the top court premises.
The land is next to the newly-developed Bharat Mandapam complex and is located on Mathura Road.
“We have already discussed the project, and work to prepare a blueprint of the complex has begun,” one of the sources said. The complex will be a state-of-the-art building and be equipped with the latest technology to facilitate arbitration proceedings, domestic or international.
Special courtrooms with video-conference facilities will be designed to conduct arbitration proceedings.
In addition, meeting rooms to hold deliberations before or after the proceedings will also find space at this centre.
“Most importantly, the complex will also cater to young advocates or first-general lawyers who struggle to find work space in their initial years of litigation practice. The plan is to include corporate-style co-working spaces for lawyers who cannot afford to either purchase or rent full-time office premises. This area in the building will have all the facilities that a counsel requires for their client meetings,” another source added.
To assist and facilitate lawyers using the complex, the centre may also provide other services, such as a library and cafeteria. “Our plan is to develop it like a modern office for advocates who can make use of the facility that is close not just to the Supreme Court, but even the Delhi High Court and one of the subordinate courts too,” the second source said.
This is the first time that the top court will have an institutionalised arbitration centre to hold arbitration proceedings. Institutional arbitration centres are those that aid and administer arbitration proceedings in terms of the rules of that institution. The centre does not arbitrate, but has a panel of arbitrators from where the parties can choose their arbitrator to decide a dispute.
Often, arbitration agreements specify the type of arbitration the parties would resolve in case of a commercial dispute. If the signatories to the contract choose for ad-hoc then they themselves appoint a panel of arbitrators in terms of conditions laid out in the agreement.
However, when the option is for institutional arbitration, then the parties submit themselves to the rules of that particular arbitration center, including appointing the arbitrators. Usually, institutional arbitrations are more structured and follow a time-frame to complete the proceedings.
The new arbitration centre, once built, will join the group of court-annexed arbitration centers that at present comprises four High Courts — Delhi, Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab and Haryana. Delhi HC was the first judicial institution to develop an arbitration centre of this sort in 2019.
This is the second ambitious project that the SC has undertaken in its 75th year of inception. The top court is all set to launch construction work for its new complex that will host newly-designed technologically advanced court rooms, including a special hall that will be designated as the constitution bench courtroom.
Once the new building is ready, all the courtrooms except for the first five would be relocated there. The present building of the apex court has 16 court halls, some of which were refurbished before the onset of the Covid pandemic to accommodate the lawyers and litigants that have grown in considerable numbers over the past few years.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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