The Supreme Court, while considering the following clause under the agreement ‘Arbitration shall be under Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Law 1996 and the Venue of Arbitration shall be Bhubaneswar’, on July 25, 2019[1] has held that where the agreement specifies the jurisdiction of the Court at a particular place, only such Court will have the jurisdiction to deal with the matter and the parties have intended to exclude the jurisdiction of all other courts. The Court noted that having agreed that the venue of the arbitration will be Bhubaneswar, the intention of the parties was to exclude the jurisdiction of all other Courts. The absence of words like ‘exclusive jurisdiction’, ‘only’, ‘exclusive’ and ‘alone’ was not decisive and does not make any material difference.

[1] Brahmani River Pellets Ltd v. Kamachi Industries Limited, Civil Appeal No. 5850 of 2019 (Supreme Court).