Unlocking the Implications of Unconditional Stay on Enforcement of Domestic Awards: A Comparative Analysis of India’s Arbitration and Conciliation Act Amendments

In the last few decades, The Arbitration and Conciliation Act has been amended quite a few times. The 2021 Amendment Act is a recent change which has been done under the Indian Arbitration system. With such several changes in such a short amount of time, it is expected that the objective is to rather make the process swift and unambiguous. The 2021 Amendment Act has brought back the issue of Unconditional stay, which was eliminated by Amendment Act of 2015, but within certain limited situations. This has resulted in the courts being deprived of the ability to grant a conditional stay and instead, they are required to grant an unconditional stay if certain conditions are met, according to the new amendment. The objective of this article is to provide a structured analogy of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act of 2015, 2019, and 2021, as well as a brief overview of significant judicial rulings that have influenced the arbitration landscape in India. The main emphasis of this article is on issues regarding the automatic stay of arbitral awards in India.