Nandakrishna M
3rd year student of BBA, LL.B,
School of Law, CUSAT.
Abstract
An arbitration is a method of resolving disputes through an arbitrator appointed by the parties in a dispute. It is a voluntary process, where parties to the dispute on mutual consent shall refer the dispute to a third party for his decision. In India, the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 deals with the law related to arbitration. The Act is in line with the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration and the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules 1976. Prior to the enactment of this Act, the law which governed arbitration process in India was governed by a 1940 Act, which was often criticized for its provisions which conferred limited power to the arbitral process as it often afforded multiple opportunities to litigants to approach the court for intervention. Whether an issue-involving allegation of fraud is a subject to arbitration or not is was always a matter of discussion for many years. The position is almost well settled with in English Law. In UK, according to Section 24(2) of the Arbitration Act 1950, the Court could review the authority of a tribunal to deal with a claim involving allegations of fraud and determine those claims itself. A famous judgment in this regard is worth mentioning i.e. Russsel v. Russel, where the court observed that “in a case where fraud is charged, the court will in general refuse to send the dispute to arbitration if the party charged with the fraud desires a public inquiry.”
Keywords: Subject matter of arbitration, arbitratrability, UNCITRAL Model Law, Arbitration and Conciliation Act, fraud
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