Centre for Arbitration Law to be launched at NALSAR

Hyderabad: Senior advocate Gourab Banerji has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to endow the Milon K Banerji Centre for Arbitration Law at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Former Supreme Court judge Justice (retd) Rohinton Fali Nariman will be the chair of the Centre, and senior advocate Ritin Rai will be its co-chair. Banerji is donor and patron.

The Centre is named in honour of Banerji’s father, the late Milon K Banerji, an eminent jurist who served as Attorney General for India for two terms, between 1992 to 1996 and 2004 to 2009.

On the partnership with NALSAR to establish the Centre, Banerji on Wednesday said, “I am particularly pleased that NALSAR and I are partnering to advance the cause of arbitration in academia. Arbitration was my father’s first and enduring passion throughout his Calcutta High Court days and in the Supreme Court. In Secretary, Irrigation Department, Government of Orissa and Ors v. GC Roy and Ors, it was his research that unearthed a judgment of the High Court of Australia (Government Insurance Office of NSW v. Atkinson-Leighton Joint Venture) and tipped the balance and persuaded the Court to hold that the arbitrator had the power to award pendente lite interest.”

Thanking Banerji for the grant, NALSAR Vice-Chancellor Prof Srikrishna Deva Rao said, “We are grateful to Gourab Banerji for this grant which will help establish a Centre which we hope shall be at the forefront of conversations in arbitration law in the years to come. As I have said in the past, we at NALSAR are embarking on a journey with a renewed focus on research and scholarship, the results of which are intended to benefit not only the academic cohort at the University but also the wider legal community across the nation and abroad.”