The scope of judicial intervention under Section 11(6) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, is limited strictly to examining the prima facie existence of an arbitration agreement, leaving questions of merit, frivolity, and non-arbitrability to be determined by the Arbitral Tribunal.

1. The present petition under Section 11(6) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 [―Act‖] has been filed seeking the appointment of an Arbitrator for the adjudication of disputes inter se the parties in accordance with Clause 8 of the Memorandum of Understanding dated 15.07.2022 [―MoU‖] as entered between the parties. Clause 8 of the MoU reads as follows:

―8. Arbitration and Jurisdiction:

Any difference or dispute arising between the Parties arising out of or in relation to this MOU shall be referred to the sole Arbitrator appointed by the First Party. The arbitration shall be conducted under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The award of the Arbitrator shall be final and binding upon the parties. The venue of the arbitration shall be at New Delhi. This MOU shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of Delhi.‖

2. The material on record indicates that pursuant to the disputes that arose between the parties, a Notice under Section 21 of the Act dated 06.06.2025 was issued by the petitioner. Vide reply dated 21.06.2025, the respondent refused to give its consent for invoking arbitration and denied the existence of any disputes between the parties.

3. Hence, the Petitioner has approached this Court by way of the present Petition seeking appointment of a sole Arbitrator.

4. The law with respect to the scope and standard of judicial scrutiny under Section 11(6) of the 1996 Act has been fairly well settled. This Court as well in the Order dated 24.04.2025 in case of ARB.P. 145/2025 titled as Pradhaan Air Express Pvt Ltd v. Air Works India Engineering Pvt Ltd has extensively dealt with the scope of interference at the stage of Section 11. The Court held as under:-

―9. The law with respect to the scope and standard of judicial scrutiny under Section 11(6) of the 1996 Act has been fairly well settled. The Supreme Court in the case of SBI General Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Krish Spinning ,¹ while considering all earlier pronouncements including the Constitutional Bench decision of seven judges in the case of Interplay between Arbitration Agreements under the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996 & the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, In re² has held that scope of inquiry at the stage of appointment of an Arbitrator is limited to the extent of prima facie existence of the arbitration agreement and nothing else.

10. It has unequivocally been held in paragraph no. 114 in the case of SBI General Insurance Co. Ltd. that observations made in Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corpn.,³ and adopted in NTPC Ltd. v. SPML Infra Ltd.,⁴ that the jurisdiction of the referral court when dealing with the issue of ―accord and satisfaction‖ under Section 11 extends to weeding out ex-facienon-arbitrable and frivolous disputes would not apply after the decision of Re : Interplay. The abovenoted paragraph no. 114 in the case of SBI General Insurance Co. Ltd. reads as under:—

“114. In view of the observations made by this Court in In Re : Interplay (supra), it is clear that the scope of enquiry at the stage of appointment of arbitrator is limited to the scrutiny of prima facie existence of the arbitration agreement, and nothing else. For this reason, we find it difficult to hold that the observations made in Vidya Drolia (supra) and adopted in NTPC v. SPML (supra) that the jurisdiction of the referral court when dealing with the issue of “accord and satisfaction” under Section 11 extends to weeding out ex-facie non-arbitrable and frivolous disputes would not apply despite the subsequent decision in In Re : Interplay (supra).”

11. Ex-facie frivolity and dishonesty are the issues, which have been held to be within the scope of the Arbitral Tribunal which i