Can Speed Be Institutionalised?

First, what exactly is being built at GIFT City?

“GIFT City arbitration” can easily sound like the name of one completed institution. It is more accurate to separate three connected but distinct layers.

The first is the wider policy project. In the Union Budget for 2022–23, the Government announced an international arbitration centre at GIFT City for the timely settlement of disputes under international jurisprudence. The International Financial Services Centres Authority subsequently constituted an Expert Committee, whose July 2024 report proposed an institutional framework for arbitration, mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution at GIFT IFSC.

That report is significant, but it remains important to describe it accurately. It proposed an architecture for an international dispute-resolution centre; it did not, by itself, convert every part of that architecture into an operational institution. Official IFSCA material available as of October 2026 continues to foreground the committee report and the work required to establish an enabling legal and institutional framework.

The second layer is the Gujarat International Maritime Arbitration Centre, or GIMAC. GIMAC is a specialist maritime institution established under the auspices of Gujarat Maritime University and housed at GIFT City. Its 2021 Arbitration Rules provide for matters including multi-party and multi-contract proceedings, emergency arbitration and a stated time limit for rendering the final award. It therefore represents an existing part of the GIFT dispute-resolution ecosystem, but its maritime specialisation should not be confused with the broader international arbitration centre proposed by IFSCA.

The third layer is the legal system supporting an arbitration seated there. GIFT City does not operate as a wholly separate arbitral jurisdiction with an independent curial law. An arbitration seated in India remains subject to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and the jurisdiction of the competent Indian courts. Institutional rules can organise a proceeding, but they cannot by themselves supply consistent judicial support, predictable interim relief or reliable enforcement.

A physical location, a specialist maritime centre and a proposed wider institution do not automatically add up to an established international seat. They can become the foundations of one, but reputation follows repeated performance.

Singapore’s advantage is accumulated procedure

Singapore’s position is not explained by one unusually fast rule. Its advantage lies in the relationship between institutional procedure, digital administration, judicial support and the confidence produced by using those systems repeatedly.

The SIAC Rules 2025 illustrate how procedural time can be deliberately organised. An Emergency Arbitrator may be appointed within 24 hours of the relevant application. An order or award on emergency interim relief is ordinarily required within fourteen days of appointment. The Rules also permit an application for a protective preliminary order, including before notice is given to the opposing party where notice could frustrate the requested relief. That request must be determined within 24 hours of the Emergency Arbitrator’s appointment, while subsequent service and hearing requirements preserve an opportunity for the affected party to respond.

The Rules also introduced a Streamlined Procedure, expanded access to expedited arbitration and incorporated SIAC Gateway, the institution’s digital case-management platform. None of these mechanisms proves that every Singapore-seated arbitration will be quick. Complex disputes remain complex, and procedure still depends on the parties, counsel, tribunal and court. What the mechanisms provide is a predictable starting structure.

That is the institutional lesson. Speed does not come from announcing that a centre will be efficient. It comes from identifying where delay occurs and designing a response for each point, whether the delay arises before tribunal formation, during document production, at the interim-relief stage, while an award is being prepared or during court proceedings.

When time becomes part of the dispute

Delay is often described as a procedural inconvenience. In many commercial disputes, it is closer to substantive harm.

An infrastructure project does not wait neutrally while parties arbitrate. Financing costs accumulate, bank guarantees remain exposed, construction schedules move and public access may be affected. In a shipping dispute, demurrage, off-hire claims, cargo deterioration and the movement of vessels make time commercially immediate. In financial disputes, the dissipation of assets can make a later award legally successful but practically useless.

The Delhi High Court’s decision in *National Highways Authority of India v Roadway Solutions India Infra Limited*, FAO(OS)(COMM) 4/2026, 2026:DHC:320-DB, offers a useful but limited illustration. The dispute arose from a highway contract and an order under Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act restraining termination and protecting contractual securities. On 13 January 2026, the Division Bench set aside that protection, giving weight to the public consequences of preventing work on an important infrastructure project.

The decision should not be turned into a sweeping rule that public interest will always defeat interim protection. Nor was it a judgment about GIFT City. Its narrower significance is that arbitration’s pendency does not automatically justify freezing contractual action where the balance of convenience and wider consequences point the other way.

Section 9 remains discretionary. The strength of the prima facie case, the nature of the contractual right, the availability of damages, the risk of irreparable harm and the balance of convenience remain central. But the case shows why commercially meaningful speed cannot be treated as a cosmetic institutional promise. By the time interim protection is sought or refused, delay may already have changed the dispute.

Indian legislation also approaches time differently depending on the arbitration. Section 29A requires an award in a domestic arbitration to be made within twelve months from completion of pleadings, subject to the Act’s extension mechanism. For an international commercial arbitration, the provision instead states that the award may be made as expeditiously as possible and that an endeavour may be made to dispose of the matter within twelve months after pleadings are completed. It is therefore inaccurate to treat twelve months as an identical mandatory outer limit for every arbitration.

The Supreme Court’s decision in *Rohan Builders (India) Private Limited v Berger Paints India Limited* further confirms that a court may entertain an application to extend the tribunal’s mandate even after the relevant period has expired. The controlling question is sufficient cause, not mechanical adherence to the date alone. The statutory framework values speed, but it does not reduce adjudication to a stopwatch.

Faster is not always fairer

Compressed procedure can prevent strategic delay. It can also create new asymmetries.

A claimant ordinarily has time to prepare before commencing proceedings. A respondent encountering the complete case for the first time may have to identify counsel, preserve records, assemble witnesses and answer an urgent application within a markedly shorter period. A rigid timetable may affect the parties differently even when it appears formally equal.

Complex infrastructure, construction and energy disputes can involve extensive expert evidence and contested factual records. A procedure suitable for a lower-value documentary claim may not be appropriate for a dispute involving multiple contracts, technical experts and numerous witnesses. Speed achieved by preventing a party from presenting its case adequately may place the eventual award at risk.

Under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, an award may be challenged where a party was not given proper notice or was otherwise unable to present its case. Comparable procedural concerns can arise when enforcement of a foreign award is resisted under Section 48. Due process is therefore not an obstacle sitting outside efficiency. It is part of what makes the result enforceable.

UNCITRAL’s Expedited Arbitration Rules recognise the same balance. They provide a shortened procedure through party agreement while retaining the principles of fair treatment and a reasonable opportunity to present one’s case. The relevant question is not simply how many days can be removed. It is which procedural steps are genuinely necessary for this dispute.

Technology presents a similar choice. Electronic filing, secure document storage, virtual hearings and searchable records can reduce logistical delay. They do not resolve poor case management on their own. A digital platform must still protect confidentiality, preserve access, record procedural communications reliably and avoid disadvantaging a party because of geography, disability or technological capacity.

An institution becomes credible when it knows when to accelerate and when not to.

What credible speed would require

For GIFT City, the opportunity lies in designing the system while its practices are still being formed.

First, the relationship between the proposed wider GIFT IFSC dispute-resolution centre and existing institutions such as GIMAC should be made clear. Specialisation can be valuable, particularly in maritime and financial disputes, but users must understand which institution administers which case, under what rules and with what legal status.

Second, procedural rules should contain firm timelines accompanied by controlled escape valves. Emergency appointment, preliminary relief, tribunal formation and award scrutiny are appropriate subjects for measurable institutional commitments. A tribunal should nevertheless be able to adjust an expedited timetable where complexity, evidence or fairness genuinely requires it. It should also give reasons for doing so.

Third, different disputes should not be forced through one procedural track. A documentary financial claim, a maritime payment dispute and a technically dense infrastructure arbitration present different evidentiary needs. Early procedural triage can determine whether a matter requires a streamlined, expedited or ordinary track.

Fourth, digital case management must be secure and usable rather than merely modern-looking. Electronic filing, audit trails, access controls, reliable notifications and protected document storage matter more than technology as branding.

Fifth, court support must be coherent. Parties assess a seat not only by reading institutional rules, but by asking how its courts treat arbitration agreements, interim measures, tribunal mandates, challenges and enforcement. Predictability at those points cannot be manufactured by the institution alone.

Finally, performance should become visible. An emerging centre can build confidence by publishing anonymised institutional data: the time taken to appoint tribunals, decide emergency applications and issue awards; the use of expedited tracks; the frequency of timetable extensions; and the broad procedural reasons for delay. Such reporting would be more persuasive than unsupported claims of speed.

A race measured in trust

GIFT City does not need to reproduce Singapore in order to become credible. Its most useful opportunity may lie in combining financial-sector proximity, maritime specialisation, lower logistical barriers for Indian parties and procedures designed around the kinds of disputes likely to arise there.

But an arbitral seat cannot be built through infrastructure and ambition alone. Parties choose institutions because they expect the rules to work under pressure: when assets may disappear, when a project cannot stop, when a tribunal must be formed urgently, when evidence is extensive and when the losing party resists the award.

Singapore’s present advantage is the confidence accumulated through institutions, courts and repeated use. GIFT City’s task is to create the conditions from which that confidence can eventually grow.

The real competition is therefore not over which centre can promise the shortest timeline. It is over which system can make a faster process remain fair, enforceable and commercially believable.