By S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors · Published 11 March 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice
About this article: A general explainer prepared by S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors on a recurring type of dispute. It does not report a specific judgment or order, names no parties and gives no case citation, so it should not be cited as authority. Law and practice change; please verify against the current statute and primary sources before relying on it.
Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 lets a party seek interim measures from a court before, during or after arbitral proceedings, but before the award is enforced. Section 17 gives the arbitral tribunal comparable powers once it is constituted. A common question is what becomes of a Section 9 application when the tribunal comes into existence.
Section 9(3), inserted by the 2015 amendment, says that once the tribunal has been constituted the court shall not entertain an application under Section 9 unless it finds that circumstances exist which may not render the remedy under Section 17 efficacious. This is generally read as a bar on fresh applications. It is not usually treated as automatically ending an application that was validly pending, especially where the court has already heard substantial argument or where the tribunal could not give equally effective relief.
The efficacy test is applied case by case, looking at urgency, the stage reached and the nature of the relief. The provision was meant to discourage parties from going to court for routine interim relief once a tribunal is in place, while preserving the court's role in exceptional situations. Section 9(2) separately requires arbitration to start within ninety days of an interim order.