The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) has built its commercial appeal on a simple promise: granting relief faster than a court grants it . The seventh edition of its rules, the SIAC Arbitration Rules 2025 (“2025 Rules”), in force since 01 January 2025, pushes that promise further than any major international arbitration institution has gone before. The 2025 Rules expand the ability of parties to obtain urgent relief without approaching courts, and even prior to the constitution of an arbitral tribunal. However, while these innovations are commercially attractive, they also give rise to what is as an “enforcement paradox”, particularly in jurisdictions like India where the legal framework governing interim relief is structured differently.

"Provisional relief can only be coercively enforced by proceedings in national courts."

— Gary B Born, International Commercial Arbitration (3rd edn, Kluwer Law International 2021) ch 17

What Does Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules Now Provide For?

Two changes to the Emergency Arbitrator procedure under Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules drive the debate.[1] First, a party may now apply for the appointment of an emergency arbitrator before it files a Notice of Arbitration (“NoA”), provided the NoA follows within 7 (seven) days. Under the 2016 edition of the SIAC Arbitration Rules, emergency relief was available only with or after the filing of the NoA. Therefore, the current rules have provided for a break from the orthodoxy that proceedings begin only on the filing of the NoA.

Secondly, a party may seek a Protective Preliminary Order (“PPO”) under Schedule 1 of the 2025 Rules on an ex parte basis, i.e. without giving any form of notice to the opposite party. These orders are intended to prevent the frustration of relief, particularly in situations involving asset dissipation or destruction of evidence. The emergency arbitrator must decide the application within 24 (twenty-four) hours of appointment. The respondent is then notified promptly and afforded an early opportunity to be heard. Any PPO automatically expires after 14 (fourteen) days unless it is confirmed. With this mechanism, SIAC became the first major arbitral institution to expressly provide for ex-parte emergency relief.

On the face of it, the commercial logic of the above mechanism is sound. Asset dissipation and the destruction of evidence do not wait for a tribunal to be constituted, and the ability to secure a position before the counterparty is alerted is exactly what an applicant facing a recalcitrant opponent needs. The difficulty lies not in the design but in the enforcement. 

Enforceability of PPO’s in India

The enforcement paradox arises from the disconnect between the availability of relief under institutional rules and its enforceability under domestic law. In India, interim relief in arbitration is structured under two broad mechanisms: interim measures granted by arbitral tribunals under Section 17, and interim relief granted by courts under Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996[2] (“Act”). Both these mechanisms presuppose that arbitration has formally commenced and that parties have had an opportunity to be heard. Emergency relief granted prior to the filing of a notice of arbitration, or without notice to the counterparty, does not neatly fit within this framework. This creates uncertainty as to whether such relief can be effectively recognised or enforced by Indian courts.

Relief granted under Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules, before a NOA has even been filed, raises a threshold question: whether an arbitration has commenced at all and, consequently, whether the emergency arbitrator possessed authority that an Indian court would recognise. Moreover, an order issued without notice, even if of limited duration and followed promptly by an opportunity for the respondent to be heard, sits uneasily with the principle of equal treatment, which Indian courts regard as a fundamental procedural safeguard. The objection is not to the availability of such relief in principle. Rather, the difficulty lies in the fact that such orders do not fit comfortably within the categories contemplated by the Act, making courts hesitant to enforce measures that cannot be readily accommodated within the statutory framework.

The governing authority in relation to the above is Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC v Future Retail Ltd (“Amazon”), in which the Supreme Court held that an emergency arbitrator’s order under the SIAC rules is an order under Section 17(1) of the Act and is enforceable under Section 17(2).[3] That decision marked a significant advance and is rightly regarded as a milestone in India’s evolving pro-arbitration jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Amazon should not, however, be stretched beyond what it decided. In Amazon, the arbitration had commenced, both sides were heard, and the Emergency Arbitrator’s order was made inter partes. The Court was not asked to rule on relief granted before the filing of a NoA, nor on an order made without notice. The widened toolkit under the 2025 Rules introduces precisely the variables Amazon left open. Whether an Indian court will extend the enforcement of Section 17 of the Act to a PPO passed by an Emergency Arbitrator appointed prior to the filing of an NOA, or whether Section 18 of the Act and ordinary due-process scrutiny will defeat it, remains unsettled.

Where This Leaves Practitioners

The practical difficulty presented by Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules is not the availability of pre-filing or ex-parte emergency relief itself, but the uncertainty surrounding its enforceability in India. As matters presently stand, a pre-filing or ex-parte order issued by an emergency arbitrator under Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules cannot safely be regarded as self-executing against assets or parties located in India. A claimant seeking effective relief will, in most cases, still need to approach an Indian court under Section 9 of the Act and seek substantially equivalent relief. This introduces a degree of duplication that inevitably diminishes some of the speed and procedural efficiency that the 2025 Rules were designed to achieve.

The consequences are not merely procedural. The uncertainty creates opportunities for strategic behaviour. A respondent may elect to delay compliance, calculating that any enforcement effort in India will require additional proceedings and consume valuable time. Conversely, a claimant anticipating enforcement difficulties may decide to bypass emergency arbitration altogether and proceed directly to the Indian courts. Either course of action undermines the institutional objective of emergency arbitration, namely the provision of rapid and effective interim protection pending the constitution of the tribunal.

At the same time, concerns regarding the enforceability of arelief provided under Rule 12 of the 2025 Rules should not be overstated. The 2025 Rules are not defective; rather, they have moved ahead of India’simportant domestic legal framework. The Supreme Court’s decision in Amazon demonstrates a willingness to accommodate emergency arbitration within the architecture of the Act where basic procedural guarantees are preserved. Although Amazon did not address pre-filing or ex-parte relief directly, it reflects a broader judicial commitment to supporting arbitral processes rather than frustrating them.

Accordingly, the more likely trajectory is one of incremental judicial development rather than categorical acceptance or rejection. Indian courts may be expected to distinguish cases according to their particular facts, paying close attention to matters such as notice, procedural fairness, and the opportunity afforded to the respondent to be heard. Orders followed by prompt notification and an early hearing may be viewed differently from measures that substantially impair a party’s rights without adequate procedural safeguards. Such an approach would be consistent with both the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Amazon and the judiciary’s broader emphasis on fairness in arbitral proceedings.

Ultimately, however, the present uncertainty will persist until it is addressed directly. The clearest resolution would come either through an authoritative judicial pronouncement specifically considering the status of pre-filing and ex-parte emergency relief, or through a targeted legislative amendment clarifying the treatment of such measures under the Act. Until then, the issue remains less a barrier to emergency arbitration than a matter of careful procedural planning.

For parties and counsel, the immediate implications are practical. Considerations of enforceability should inform the choice of seat, the drafting of arbitration agreements, and the strategy adopted when urgent relief becomes necessary. While the 2025 Rules have expanded the range of measures that an Emergency Arbitrator may grant, Indian law has not yet expanded with equal clarity the range of measures that domestic courts will enforce. For the present, bridging that gap remains a task for practitioners rather than rule-makers.