The Legal Committee of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized a special Seminar on Arbitration on 7th May 2016 from 3 p.m. onwards in the Williamson Magor Hall, 1st Floor, Chamber premises.

The general law relating to arbitration is contained in the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996 (hereinafter referred to as the `said Act’) which is based on UNCITRAL MODEL LAW on International Commercial Arbitration as adopted in 1985 by United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, applying to both international as well as domestic arbitration. The said Act was enacted to provide an alternative dispute redressal mechanism for speedy disposal of cases relating to arbitration with the least intervention of the Court. With the passage of time, some difficulties in the applicability of the said Act were noticed. Interpretation on the provisions of the said Act by the Court in some cases have resulted in delay in disposal of arbitration proceedings and increase in interference of Courts in arbitration matters, which tends to defeat the object of the Act. With a view to overcome the said difficulties, the President was pleased to promulgate the Arbitration & Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2015 on 23rd October, 2015. The said Ordinance has since been replaced by the Arbitration & Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015, which came into force on 31st December, 2015 with retrospective effect from 23rd October, 2015. This amendment has raised several eyebrows amongst the lawyers, the litigants, businessmen and corporates, alike.

This was an attempt on the part of the Chamber to have the pros and cons of the said amendments and its effect on the litigants, the arbitrators and the lawyers practicing in this field. The speakers of the seminar included luminaries like Shri Jayanta Kumar Mitra, Advocate General of West Bengal, who spoke on the basic fields of amendments in 2015, Mr. Jishnu Saha, Senior Advocate, who spoke on the amendment of Sections 2, 7, 8, 9, 11 (except sub-sections 8 and 14) and 17 of the Act, Justice Alok Chakraborty (Retd), who spoke on the amendment of Sections 11(8) and (14), 12 and 29A & B and Mr. Samrat Sen, Senior Advocate, who spoke on the amendment of Sections 24, 31A, 34, 36 and 37 of the Act. The programme was moderated by Senior Advocate Mr. Paritosh Sinha, Member Legal Committee, The Bengal Chamber. It was a most successful and well-subscribed seminar and was well attended by the media.