Supreme Court will not referee a 24-year-old award execution, asks Law Commission to fix enforcement

A three-judge bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh holds that answering a certified question did not make the Court the supervisor of the Delhi High Court execution of a 2002 Iraqi Dinar award, and asks the Law Commission to study why awards take so long to realise.

An arbitral award made on 10 August 2002 is still being fought over in execution, and on 28 October 2026 the Supreme Court said it would not be drawn in to umpire that fight. A three-judge bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh set aside the approach of a Delhi High Court Division Bench which had given the parties liberty to come back to the Supreme Court for a clarification of its 2023 judgment. That judgment, the bench held, answered one certified question of law and nothing more; it did not make the Supreme Court the overseer of every factual dispute that arises in the execution of the award. In the same breath the Court dismissed an application by the award-debtor to modify the 2023 judgment, and then went further than the parties had asked. Alarmed that litigation over enforcement was running more than twenty-four years after the award, it requested the Law Commission of India to undertake a focused study of how arbitral awards are executed in India and to recommend changes.

The judgment, written by Justice Nath and marked reportable, disposes of a civil appeal arising out of Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 14005 of 2026 and a miscellaneous application, Diary No. 48152 of 2026, filed in the disposed-of Civil Appeal No. 1991 of 2019.

An award in Iraqi Dinars and a question about dollars

Royal Construction Company Pvt. Ltd. is the award-holder; National Projects Construction Corporation, a public sector company represented by Additional Solicitor General Vikramjit Banerjee, is the award-debtor. The underlying agreement between them dates from 1982. An internationally seated arbitration produced an award on 10 August 2002 in favour of Royal Construction, with the sums denominated in Iraqi Dinars.

The award was challenged through the Indian courts and reached the Supreme Court, which on 24 February 2015 restored the directions in the award. That judgment, in Civil Appeal Nos. 2543-44 of 2015, applied the principle of minimal judicial intervention: courts are not to substitute their own satisfaction for the arbitral tribunal’s unless a statutory ground under Section 34 or Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is made out.

Royal Construction then took the award into execution before the Delhi High Court. On 26 July 2017 a Single Judge held that the award-debtor could discharge its liability in Indian currency, converting at the exchange rate prevailing on 26 September 1982, the date the judgment records as that of the underlying agreement. Royal Construction appealed. On 17 December 2019 a Division Bench set aside the Single Judge’s order and, under Articles 134-A and 133(1)(a) of the Constitution, certified a substantial question of general importance for the Supreme Court: in terms of the agreement of 29 June 1982 and in light of the 2015 judgment, what should be the relevant date for converting the awarded sum from US Dollars to Indian Rupees? The question, as the judgment records it, spoke of US Dollars, although the award itself was denominated in Iraqi Dinars.

The Supreme Court answered that question on 10 October 2023, and answered it in the negative. No occasion arose, it held, for determining or fixing any date for converting the award into Indian Rupees; payment was to be made in foreign currency. It cautioned that the terms of the agreement, the award and the directions in the 2015 judgment were not to be disturbed.

Liberty to ask the Supreme Court what it meant

Execution resumed in the High Court. There, NPCC took a new position: the principal amount, it said, had already been paid in Indian Rupees in 2009 under orders of the High Court. On 16 February 2026, in Execution First Appeal (Original Side) No. 17 of 2018, the Division Bench passed an interim order granting the parties liberty to seek clarification from the Supreme Court as to why this fact had not been brought to its notice when it was answering the certified question. Royal Construction, represented by Mr. Rishabh Sancheti, challenged that order, and the Court granted leave. After going through the record and hearing both sides, the bench concluded that the Division Bench had fallen into error.

Answering a certified question is not supervising the execution

The bench found that the Division Bench had misunderstood the scope of what the Supreme Court had decided. A reading of the 10 October 2023 judgment made it evident that the Court, sitting in appellate jurisdiction, had been called upon to answer the substantial question of law the High Court had certified. Its consideration was confined to that question. It did not examine factual matters beyond that ambit, and having held that no conversion date needed fixing and that payment was due in foreign currency, it had no occasion to say anything about amounts deposited in the High Court or their later withdrawal.

Justice Nath drew the line firmly. The executing court’s order had gone to the Division Bench, which certified a question and sent it up; the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction was limited to answering it. The Court cannot be called upon, “in the guise of seeking clarification, to assume a supervisory role” over continuing execution proceedings, or to adjudicate every issue that arises in them. Those questions belong to the court seized of the execution and to the appellate court with jurisdiction over its orders. Once the certified question was answered, the earlier appellate proceedings were exhausted, and it would be impermissible to enlarge that adjudication by seeking answers to questions distinct from, and unconnected with, the dispute already decided.

The appeal was disposed of in those terms. Whether NPCC paid the principal in 2009, and what that payment is worth against an award denominated in a foreign currency, is for the Delhi High Court to decide in the execution.

Twenty-four years on, the Court asks the Law Commission to study execution

In an epilogue the bench recorded its concern at the course the proceedings had taken. The arbitration was invoked when the Arbitration Act, 1940 was still in force. The country is now approaching three decades under the 1996 Act, enacted in furtherance of the UNCITRAL Model Law to deliver expeditious dispute resolution with minimal judicial intervention. Yet more than twenty-four years after the award, the parties are still litigating its enforcement. That state of affairs, the Court said, “strikes at the very rationale underlying the adoption of arbitration” as an alternative to civil litigation.

The efficacy of an arbitral regime, the bench reasoned, cannot be measured only by how quickly an award is rendered or how narrowly it can be challenged. It must also be judged by whether the winning party can realise the fruits of the award within a reasonable time. “The promise of arbitration remains unfulfilled” if a party that has been through the arbitral process must then embark on another protracted round of litigation to collect.

The statute, the Court observed, has addressed delay in the arbitration itself, in challenges to awards and in stays on enforcement. Actual execution has had less attention. Section 36 of the 1996 Act enforces an award in the same manner as a decree, which means the ordinary machinery of execution under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. The experience of cases like this one, the bench said, calls for a closer look at whether that framework serves the objectives of arbitration. It named four areas for scrutiny: identification and disclosure of the award-debtor’s assets; coordination between different modes of execution; disposal of repetitive or dilatory objections; and the time taken to conclude execution. Comparative legal systems, it added, may offer useful models for more effective and coordinated enforcement while preserving legitimate safeguards for judgment-debtors.

The Court therefore requested the Law Commission of India to undertake a focused study of the statutory and procedural framework governing enforcement and execution of arbitral awards. The study may identify the practical impediments to timely recovery, examine the experience of other jurisdictions, and consider whether domestic and foreign awards warrant distinct enforcement procedures or a common framework with appropriate safeguards. The Commission may then make whatever legislative or procedural recommendations it considers necessary to strengthen the execution regime, so that enforcement matches the objectives of the 1996 Act and the country’s commitment to being an arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. The Registry was directed to forward a copy of the judgment to the Chairman of the Law Commission.

The award-debtor’s own application fails

The miscellaneous application came from the other side of the same dispute. NPCC, the appellant in the disposed-of Civil Appeal No. 1991 of 2019, asked the Court to modify its 10 October 2023 judgment on the ground that the amounts it had deposited in Indian Rupees under the High Court’s order, in its capacity as award-debtor, had already been withdrawn by Royal Construction in 2009. The Court took the application on board and dismissed it for the reason it had just given: the earlier appeal was confined to the certified question, and the Court had never been asked to adjudicate the facts of deposit or withdrawal. NPCC remains free to raise every objection and contention about adjustment or set-off of those amounts before the executing court, in accordance with law.

Order

The civil appeal arising out of SLP (C) No. 14005 of 2026 is disposed of, with the Court declining to clarify its judgment of 10 October 2023 and leaving all questions in the execution to the Delhi High Court. The Law Commission of India is requested to study the framework for enforcement and execution of arbitral awards, and the Registry is to send it a copy of the judgment. Miscellaneous Application Diary No. 48152 of 2026 in Civil Appeal No. 1991 of 2019 is dismissed, with liberty to NPCC to raise its set-off and adjustment contentions before the executing court. All pending applications stand disposed of.