ARBITRABILITY OF DISPUTES INVOLVING CORPORATE DEBTORS: RECONCILING THE ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION ACT, 1996 WITH THE MORATORIUM UNDER SECTION 14 OF THE IBC

The intersection of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) presents one of the most intriguing statutory conflicts in modern Indian commercial jurisprudence. While arbitration is founded on party autonomy, consensual dispute resolution, and private adjudication, the IBC is driven by a collective, time-bound, and creditor-centric insolvency resolution framework. At the core of this statutory friction lies Section 14 of the IBC, which triggers an automatic statutory moratorium upon the admission of a Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP). This article examines the jurisdictional tug-of-war between private arbitration and the public interest mechanism of the IBC. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal nature of disputes (rights in rem versus rights in personam), the scope and extent of the statutory moratorium under Section 14, and Furthermore, the article examines judicial approaches concerning proceedings benefiting the corporate debtor and analyses the implications of the clean slate doctrine under Section 31 of the IBC for pending arbitral claims.