Anam Turab Amjad Hassan
5th Year BA.LLB Student, Osmania University | Special Commentary for Accendo Law
Introduction
Arbitration is a procedure in which a dispute is submitted, by agreement of the parties, to one or more arbitrators who make a binding decision on the dispute. Unlike Litigation (going to the Court) or Mediation (where parties negotiate a voluntary settlement), arbitration removes the decision-making from the parties and vests its power in the arbitrators.
A contract provision known as the arbitration clause indicates when the dispute must be arbitrated. Every arbitration clause appears the same in format; it includes a city name, a governing law and a sentence about “mutual consent”. Most parties never pay much attention to the agreement until the dispute lands on the wrong Court’s table, which takes them back to their agreement.
That is what this essay focuses on in connection with what happened in Supreme Court ruling this April. At the heart of it is a distinction that may sound technical, but it decides which Court has jurisdiction over a case: the difference between where an arbitration is seated and where it merely sits.
Seat v. the Venue: The Distinction
Arbitration Law draws a sharp line between the seat and the venue of arbitration.
Core Jurisdictional Rule
Jurisdiction, in this context, is simply which Court has the power to supervise the arbitration and hear a challenge to the award and that power depends entirely on the seat, not the venue. The seat is the arbitration’s juridical home. The venue, by contrast, is just the physical room where hearings happen to be held, usually chosen for convenience under Section 20(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The seat carries legal weight; the venue does not.
The Case: JKERA v. Rash Builders
That distinction was tested in J&K Economic Reconstruction Agency V. Rash Builders India Pvt. Ltd. (2026 INSC 368, decided April 15, 2026).
Facts state that the seat of arbitration had been fixed at Srinagar, by consent of both the parties. But for convenience, the actual hearings, and the award itself, took place in New Delhi. When the award was challenged, the Jammu & Kashmir High Court reasoned that since everything had practically happened in Delhi, only the Delhi Courts had jurisdiction, and returned the petition accordingly.
What the Court Held
The Supreme Court disagreed with Jammu & Kashmir’s decision, and restated a principle that the Indian arbitration law has been building from its previous decisions rather than announcing something new.
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Bharat Aluminium Co. v. Kaiser Aluminium Technical Services Inc. (2012) 9 SCC 552 (BALCO): The Supreme Court first established that once a seat is chosen, it operates like an exclusive jurisdictional clause, binding the parties to the Court of that one place.
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BGS SGS Soma JV v. NHPC (2020) 4 SCC 234: The Court went further and held that the seat is what determines which Court has supervisory control, and that even an undesignated “venue” can be read as the seat, unless stated otherwise as per the clause.
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BBR (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. S.P. Singla Constructions (2023) 1 SCC 693: The Court addressed the immutability question directly: once a seat is fixed under Section 20(2), it survives even a change of arbitrator or a change in where hearings are physically held; it can be relocated only through the express, mutual consent of both the parties, and not by inference from conduct.
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Inox Renewables v. Jayesh Electricals (2023) 3 SCC 733: Shows what that consent looks like when it is actually present: there, the seat genuinely did shift, but only because the parties’ agreement to move it had been clearly and mutually recorded.
JKERA pulls these threads together: hearings held in Delhi, or an award signed in Delhi, could not by themselves move a seat that both parties had already fixed at Srinagar.
The Precedential Value
These cases showcase crystalline rules for practitioners: convenience never substitutes for express consent and not mere inference. If a client’s hearings move cities for scheduling reasons, that alone changes nothing about jurisdiction. What matters is whether there is a clear, recorded, mutual agreement – ideally in writing, not left to inference from where the parties show up.
The JKERA bench emphasized that construing jurisdiction off the venue of an award would make the whole concept of a “seat” pointless, and would invite exactly the kind of forum-shopping litigation the seat/venue distinction exists to prevent. Predictability, not convenience, is the value that the law is protecting here.
Conclusion
The quieter lesson from JKERA is for the drafting stage, long before any dispute arises. Most arbitration clauses are written once and never revisited, but a seat clause deserves the same scrutiny as a limitation period or a governing-law clause, because it is, in effect, both.
Key Takeaways & Clarifications
No. Per BBR India and JKERA, the seat stays fixed regardless of where hearings are physically conducted.
Yes, but only through the express, mutual consent of both parties, not through conduct or convenience. Inox Renewables is the example of what that consent looks like when properly recorded.
Also irrelevant to jurisdiction; as per JKERA, the place an award is signed is, at most, a "stray recital," not proof that the seat moved.
No. The seat, once fixed, belongs to the parties' agreement; an arbitrator conducting proceedings elsewhere doesn't have the power to relocate it unilaterally.
“Arbitration has one rule musical chairs doesn't: the seat only moves if both players agree to swap, never just because the music happened to stop somewhere else.”
