An appellate court exercising jurisdiction under Section 37 should not interfere with an Arbitral Tribunal's discretionary interim orders unless the exercise of discretion involves perversity, caprice, or violation of settled legal principles, as the Tribunal is the best judge for protecting the subject matter of the arbitration.

JUDGMENT :

SOMASEKHAR SUNDARESAN, J.

Context and Factual Background:

1. This is a Petition filed under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“the Act”) impugning an order dated September 20, 2025 (“Impugned Order”) passed under Section 17 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.

2. The Petitioners, Mayank J. Shah, Shreyans J. Shah and Shruti M. Shah (“collectively Mayank”) and the Respondent No. 1, Raju V. Shah (“Raju”) are partners of Respondent No. 2, Vidhi Research and Development LLP (“Vidhi LLP”). Vidhi LLP is governed by a Limited Liability Partnership Agreement dated August 14, 2014 (“LLP Agreement”), which is the instrument containing the arbitration agreement.

3. The disputes between Mayank and Raju relate to control and management of Vidhi LLP, which owns land admeasuring approximately 2,18,122 square metres (“Subject Land”) earlier owned by Pfizer Limited (“Pfizer”). The parties have a serious conflict over governance rights vested in Raju about business and operational decisions of Vidhi LLP as contained in the LLP Agreement. The parties have been engaged in arbitration for a considerable period of time.

4. I have to take judicial notice of the fact that submissions in the arbitration proceedings have been concluded and judgement is reserved. Such judicial notice is based on multiple Petitions under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 having been brought before this Court on various occasions from time to time, challenging decisions in other Section 17 proceedings filed in the same arbitration.

5. As regards this Petition, the challenge essentially is to the restraint imposed by the Impugned Order, whereby Mayank is restrained from dealing with the Subject Land. The context of the restraint is Mayank’s claim that an offer has been received for sale of a portion of the Subject Land admeasuring 1,00,000 square metres, purportedly from a multinational company for an indicated rate of Rs. 1.25 lakh per square metre – a projected consideration value of Rs. 1,250 crores.

6. According to Mayank, restraint on completing such a lucrative offer is unnecessary under Section 17 of the Act. Mayank would contend that the Impugned Order ignores the rule of majority, the provisions of the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008 (“LLP Act”) and the provisions of the LLP Agreement that bind the parties. According to Mayank, the Impugned Order interferes with the commercial wisdom of the majority partners of Vidhi LLP, and most importantly, grossly misinterprets an order dated July 20, 2022 passed by the very same Learned Arbitral Tribunal and that too by consent of the parties.

Analysis and Findings:

7. I have heard at significant length, Mr. Navroz Seervai, Learned Senior Advocate and Mr. Sanjay Jain Learned Advocate on behalf of Mayank; and Mr. Chetan Kapadia, Learned Senior Advocate on behalf of Raju. With their assistance, I have examined the material on record.

8. The Impugned Order essentially dealt with Interim Application No. 14 dated August 18, 2025 (“IA 14”) filed by Raju seeking a restraint on Mayank from dealing in any manner with the Subject Land and to restrain Mayank from giving effect to a letter dated July 7, 2025, by which Mayank had is