The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Amazon.com Inc. may properly seek an interim injunction from a Singapore arbitral tribunal that had blocked the Future Group’s $3.4 billion sales of retail assets to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL).
The panel, led by Justice Rohinton F Nariman, maintained the Delhi high court’s single judge ruling and the enforceability of a Singapore-based Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award in Amazon’s favor.
The EA award was affirmed under Section 17 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, according to judge Nariman, who read the operative section of the decision. The provision establishes a procedure for parties to an arbitration to seek interim relief from the arbitral tribunal while the arbitration is ongoing.
A legal dispute has erupted over control of India’s burgeoning e-commerce sector. The court injunction, obtained at the request of Amazon in the United States, preserves the status quo on the FRL-Reliance agreement until numerous legal concerns relating to the case are resolved.
Senior attorney Harish Salve, who represented Future retail, claimed that the EA had no place in Indian law and that such a judgment could not be implemented under Section 17 of the Arbitration Act.
In response, Amazon relied on the Singapore tribunal’s October 25, 2020, EA order to claim that the Future Group was bound by the award.
The Supreme Court blocked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) from accepting the FRL-RIL merger on February 22. Even if Future Group organises a meeting of its creditors and shareholders to approve the planned merger, the NCLT’s Mumbai bench, according to the top court, would not approve it.
