He said that when a person challenged an arbitral award, he should go straight to a Division Bench, which should again be a specialised Division Bench dealing with such matters. The arbitration cases should then be taken up expeditiously and disposed of.

Once this was done, this place would really become a hub for international arbitration, he added.

Delivering the keynote address at a session of the Delhi Arbitration Weekend, hosted by the Delhi International Arbitration Center (DIAC) of the Delhi High Court in collaboration with the Apex Court, Justice Nariman said that he has been making this suggestion for years, although it has not been taken seriously yet.

They have amended the Arbitration Act and the number of times, but they did not seem to take seriously the suggestion that the single-judge state should be removed altogether.

There should be no-single judge in arbitration cases, he added.

Justice Nariman said he has been in a state of bliss for the last two-and-a-half years since he has retired from the Supreme Court.

Once a person was out of that great institution, that bliss rarely got disturbed, except when sometimes he was asked to give speeches like this, because it took them back to their good old or bad old days when they were so flooded with work that there was little else a person could do.

The main focus of Justice Nariman’s speech was on two judgments from the Singapore Court of Appeal, namely the cases of Republic of India v Deutsche Telekom and Anupam Mittal v. Westbridge Ventures.

He discussed the various approaches taken in foreign jurisdictions when it came to enforcement of arbitral awards or enforcement of judgments setting aside arbitral awards.

Justice Nariman observed that in such matters, Indian courts usually looked at the relevant arbitration conventions closely, examined the other country’s views on convention and then arrived at their decisions on law and facts.

He said the only problem with the adjudication of arbitration cases in India was the amount of time taken during the process.

The notification of the various benches of Supreme Court of India that will hear cases during the upcoming summer vacation from May 23 to July 10 has been released.

 As per the powers under Rule 6 of Order II of the Supreme Court Rules, the Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana has nominated twelve Division Benches that shall be hearing cases during the seven weeks of summer break.

Details are as follows:

May 23 to May 29

1. Justices DY Chandrachud and Bela M Trivedi;

2. Justices S Abdul Nazeer and PS Narasimha.

May 30 to June 5

1. Justices Ajay Rastogi and BV Nagarathna;

2. Justices BR Gavai and PS Narasimha.

June 6 to June 12

1. Justice MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose.

June 13 to June 19

1. Justices AS Bopanna and Vikram Nath;

2. Justices JK Maheshwari and Hima Kohli.

June 20 to June 26

1. Justices CT Ravikumar and Sudhanshu Dhulia.

June 27 to July 3

1. Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala,

2. Justices AS Oka and MM Sundresh.

July 4, 2022 to July 10, 2022

1. Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheshwari;

2. Justices Dinesh Maheswari and Krishna Murari.

During the vacation, the Registry will remain open from 10.00 AM to 5.00 PM for all its officers and staff except the non-clerical Group-C members, for whom the timings will be 9.30 AM to 5.30 PM on all days except Saturdays.

The High Court of Madras has granted bail to a Maoist who had been arrested on suspicion by NIA on condition of giving an oath to the effect that he would abide by the Constitution of India, while swearing his utmost faith by filing an affidavit in Tamil stating that he does not believe in Maoist ideology. He offcourse had to affix his thump impression and sign on the needed documents.

Under the bench of Justice P.N. Prakash and Justice A.A.Nakkiran , the petitioner Suresh Rajan was directed to execute a bond for Rs 25000 for bail along with two sureties, both blood relatives, to the satisfaction of the special court for cases investigated under the NIA Act of 2008. He was also ordered to visit the court everyday at 10.30 am till the further orders come.

It all started in Madurai when one Vivek alias Vivekanandan was initially booked in a case on 15th August 2020,where he had in his Facebook account titled “Thozhar Vivek” wrote a message in Tamil that read that “the Independence that the country obtained in 1947 from the British was a sham and a farce”

In his Facebook post he claimed that India is yet to get rid of feudalism, imperialism and exploitation of the poor. In his post he requested the people to understand and mobilise in the path of war as shown by the Naxalites.

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The post speaks about the real freedom that would be achieved only after following the path of these. The Tallakulam police of Madurai had booked the case on September 1, 2020 and Vivek was put behind the bars on December 16, 2020.

In March 2021, NIA took over the case and arrested Suresh Rajan in the month of June. Suresh Ranjan came in picture because the SIM and Facebook account that Vivek was using for the post belonged to him. What is really interesting is that Suresh Rajan had deleted the account two days after the arrest of Vivek.

NIA included another accused in the case named Mohan who was an advocate by profession, but couldn’t be arrested as he was physically challenged. The advocate has been charged for his mobile was used by Vivek to access the Facebook account and uploaded the objectionable message on the Independence day.

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Vivek was granted bail by the Special Court on May 5, 2021 as NIA had failed to file the charge sheet within 90 days of arrest. The agency had appealed against the grant of bail, but it was rejected. Though NIA preferred an appeal against the grant of bail, the High Court rejected the appeal on June 28, 2021. The charge sheet was meanwhile filed on June 11, 2021.

The bail application of Suresh Rajan was rejected by the Special leading to the present appeal.

The Division Bench agreed with the appellant’s counsel R. Sankarasubbu that the appellant need not be denied the benefit of bail when the prime accused himself had been granted the benefit.

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NIA believed that Suresh Rajan (the appellant) was a staunch believer of Maoist ideology and after taking note of Mr. Sankarasubbu’s submission that the claim was not true, the judges directed the appellant to owe allegiance to the Constitution as a condition to enjoy the benefit of bail.