Excessive judicial interference not good for investors: Jaitley
New York, June 19: "Excessive interference" by the judiciary in commercial arbitration is not good for the investor because it adds costs to Indian companies and the cabinet is considering changes in law to deal with that, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here Thursday. "When India did legislate in terms of global compatibility, dispute redressal laws for international commercial arbitration, etc., the courts interpreted it to mean that 'our jurisdictions are not ousted; we can interfere'," Jaitley said. "Indian parties (to contracts) have suffered on account of this approach because then an essential ingredient of all contracts is that the venue of dispute redressal will be outside India (and) the substantive and procedural laws will also be outside India." "This has become very costly for Indian parties," he added. "So an excessive interference or a tendency to have excessive judicial interference is not necessarily a move which is friendly to the interest of the investor itself." Participating in a discussion presided over by former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, Jaitley was answering a question from the audience about the effect of the judiciary on the economic and infrastructure development agenda.
