The Supreme Court has reiterated the well-established distinction between the 'seat' of arbitration, which fixes the supervisory jurisdiction of courts over the arbitration, and the 'venue', which is merely the geographically convenient place where hearings are physically held and carries no independent jurisdictional consequence once the seat is otherwise clear from the parties' agreement.
The dispute arose from a contract that designated one city as the 'venue' for arbitration hearings while separately providing that the arbitration would be conducted in accordance with the rules of an institution headquartered in a different city, and containing an exclusive jurisdiction clause referring only to the courts of that second city. The Court held that, read as a whole, the parties' agreement fixed the seat at the city named in the exclusive jurisdiction clause, and the reference to a 'venue' elsewhere was purely logistical.
The Court reiterated the settled position, traced through BALCO and later authorities, that where a contract clearly designates a seat, courts should not import a competing supervisory jurisdiction merely because hearings were, for convenience, conducted at a different location: the seat, not the venue, determines which courts can entertain applications under Sections 9, 34 and 37 of the Act.