A three-month injunction, stayed at the first hearing of the appeal, then wiped out along with the stay itself
Once an arbitral tribunal exists, interim protection belongs to it. The Supreme Court appoints a sole arbitrator in the Kinetic Green–Saera Electric dispute and clears both orders below out of his way.
Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 lets a party obtain interim protection from a court before an arbitral tribunal exists. Section 17 gives the tribunal the same power once it does. The statutory design is that the court’s role is a stopgap — and the practical consequence, when a tribunal is finally constituted, is that a stack of court orders about interim relief can become so much paper.
On 24 September 2026 a Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi gave effect to that design in a commercial-vehicle dispute, and did it with the agreement of both sides.
Three agreements and a brand
The parties executed three agreements on 26 August 2025: a Manufacturing Agreement, a Supply and Distribution Agreement, and an Intellectual Property Agreement. Under the first, the respondent was to manufacture vehicles exclusively for the appellant to agreed specifications. The agreement carried exclusivity and non-compete provisions, stipulated an Effective Date, and ran for a contractual term of twenty years. The framework contemplated subsequent purchase orders and the commencement of sales at a later stage.
The dispute concerned the respondent’s manufacture and sale of vehicles under the Mayuri brand, including the Mayuri Rattan, and certain models it proposed to introduce. The appellant’s case was that these fell inside the contractual field of exclusivity and non-compete, and that their continued manufacture, marketing and sale would defeat the very protection the agreements were meant to secure.
The respondent’s answer had three limbs: that its Mayuri vehicles were a pre-existing business; that the contractual definition of “Vehicles” was narrower than the appellant asserted; and that the commercial arrangement had not really commenced at all, no purchase order for manufacture having been placed and no substantial monetary consideration having passed.
The Commercial Court’s order
The appellant went to the Commercial Court, Bengaluru under Section 9. On 6 August 2026 that court considered the agreements, the material from both sides and the submissions, framed the questions whether a prima facie case had been made out and whether balance of convenience and irreparable injury justified interim protection, and answered both in the affirmative.
It restrained the respondent from taking steps towards the launch, manufacture, marketing, supply, distribution or sale of new vehicles or products similar to those contemplated under the Manufacturing Agreement, and from continuing or taking further steps towards the manufacture, marketing, distribution and sale of the existing Mayuri-branded auto-shaped three-wheeler electric vehicles, including the Mayuri Rattan L5 Auto and similar variants.
Two features of that order matter. It was wide — it reached an existing product line, not merely a proposed launch. And it was short: the interim measures were expressly operative for three months or until the constitution of the arbitral tribunal, whichever came earlier. The Commercial Court, in other words, had written its own expiry date, keyed to the moment Section 17 would take over.
The stay at the first hearing
The respondent appealed under Section 37. On 20 August 2026 — at the first hearing of the appeal — the Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court stayed the Commercial Court’s order until the next date.
It recorded reasons: that the arrangement between the parties was in the nature of a joint venture; that the joint venture had not “taken off”; that there did not appear to be any tangible consideration flowing under the agreement; and that the respondent had been manufacturing certain models for several years, some launched as early as 2023.
The stay was not unconditional. The High Court directed that the respondent would not launch any new vehicle, and would maintain accounts of all “auto-shaped vehicles” it manufactured, with their models.
So within a fortnight the position had moved twice, and on the merits of the contract — whether the joint venture had commenced, what consideration had passed, how far back the Mayuri line went — findings had been recorded at an interlocutory stage in two courts, neither of which was the forum the parties had chosen to decide those questions.
What the parties asked for
At the hearing in the Supreme Court, the Senior Advocates on both sides asked, in unison, that the Court appoint a sole arbitrator to decide the disputes under all three agreements. The Court asked them to discuss a name. Although the arbitral tribunal was originally contemplated to consist of three arbitrators, the parties agreed before the Court that a sole arbitrator would do, and proposed Justice R.V. Raveendran, former Judge of the Supreme Court.
They also told the Court what they intended to do next: file an application under Section 17 before the arbitrator seeking appropriate relief as permissible in law — and asked that the orders of the Commercial Court and the High Court be set aside or modified.
The Court agreed that constituting a tribunal was the appropriate course at this stage, requested Justice Raveendran to act as sole arbitrator, and directed the parties to appear before him on the date the tribunal notifies.
The bridge, and the clean slate
Two things then had to be arranged, and the judgment does both in one paragraph.
First, a bridge. With the tribunal constituted, the parties are at liberty to apply under Section 17 for interim measures. But something had to hold the position until that application is decided. The Court therefore modified paragraph 12 of the High Court’s order — replacing the direction that “the appellant will not launch any new vehicle” with a direction that the respondent will not launch or manufacture the vehicles described in Annexures A and B of the agreement, read with the specifications clause and the vehicles indicated there — and made that operative until orders are passed on the Section 17 application. The remaining part of paragraph 12, including the accounting obligation, was left undisturbed.
The substitution is worth pausing on. As it stood, the High Court’s restraint named the wrong party and was expressed at large; as substituted, it binds the respondent and is tied to the contractual annexures that define the disputed field. It is a narrower and more precise holding direction, and it does not require anyone to decide what “auto-shaped vehicle” means before the arbitrator does.
Second, a clean slate. The Court directed that the arbitrator examine the Section 17 application uninfluenced by the observations made under the impugned orders, and then set aside or modified both the Commercial Court’s order of 6 August 2026 and the High Court’s order of 20 August 2026. The High Court was directed to consign the records of the Section 37 appeal to file in the teeth of the order. The appeal was disposed of on those terms.
The result is that everything said at the interlocutory stage about whether the joint venture had taken off, what consideration had flowed, and how the definition of “Vehicles” should be read is off the table. The arbitrator begins with the agreements and the Section 17 application, and no finding to live with.
The judgment is marked non-reportable, and it decides no question of law. Its utility for practitioners lies in the sequencing. A Section 9 order made expressly to lapse on the constitution of a tribunal is a holding measure, and an appeal against it under Section 37 is a contest over a measure with a built-in end date. Where both sides are prepared to move to arbitration, the Supreme Court’s course here — appoint, bridge, wipe the interlocutory findings — costs less than litigating the appeal to a conclusion whose value expires with the order under challenge.