On Tuesday, the Singapore Court of Appeal overturned an international arbitration award related to a government railway contract after discovering that large parts of the decision had been “copied and pasted” from two previous Indian arbitration rulings. Notably, the Court pointed out in its 40-page judgment that all three rulings had the same Presiding Arbitrator, former Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. The ruling pointed out that “out of the 451 paragraphs in the Award, it was undisputed that at least 212 paragraphs were copied and pasted from the Parallel Awards.” The word Parallel Awards refers to two separate Indian arbitration cases involving the same parties, which were conducted alongside the arbitration in Singapore.

The Court of Appeal, Singapore’s highest judicial authority led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, reviewed a case involving a dispute over a major railway project in India. According to the ruling, the conflict centred on a special purpose vehicle created to oversee the Dedicated Freight Corridors and a consortium of three companies that won a contract in 2014 to manage the western section of the corridor.

The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL), which operates under the Ministry of Railways, was formed to handle these freight corridors' planning, development, funding, construction, and operation. The arbitration proceedings for this case began in December 2021.

The ruling stated that the case was to be decided by a panel of three arbitrators, all distinguished retired Indian judges. "The Honourable Justice Krishna Kumar Lahoti, former Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, and The Honourable Justice Gita Mittal, former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court (together, the 'co-arbitrators'), were nominated as arbitrators by the appellants and the respondent, respectively. The Honourable Justice Dipak Misra, a former Chief Justice of India, was nominated as president of the Tribunal by his co-arbitrators (the 'President')," the ruling mentioned.

It’s uncommon for a court handling such appeals to name the arbitrators publicly. In 2024, the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) initially heard the appeal challenging the arbitration award and decided to overturn it, but chose not to disclose the names of the arbitrators at that time.

“With regret, I conclude that the assertion of apparent bias against Judge C, a highly experienced judge and arbitrator, is well-founded,” the SICC stated, referring to Justice Misra. The court accepted the consortium’s claim that Justice Misra’s reliance on material from the Parallel awards amounted to “pre-judging a case and that the accumulated knowledge of Judge C and his willingness to use that knowledge in preparing the Award constitutes impermissible pre-judging.”

The Indian special purpose vehicle (SPV) reportedly told the Court of Appeal that similar arbitration awards didn’t significantly influence the final decision in the international arbitration. As a result, there was no real breach of procedural fairness.