Dispute Resolution
under Indian law.
Arbitration, insolvency, consumer and cheque-bounce proceedings each run on a deadline the Limitation Act does not govern, and two of them are hard ceilings no court can lift: s.34(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 allows three months plus at most thirty days 'but not thereafter', and s.61(2) of the IBC caps a NCLAT appeal at thirty days plus fifteen. The clause that sends you there is drafted long before the dispute, which is where LexVio reads it.
Last reviewed: 19 August 2026 · every citation on this page names the dataset it came from
- 9governing provisions
- 9product capabilities
- 1free tools
- 5limitation periods
- 4audiences
Dispute resolution begins in the contract. The governing-law and dispute-resolution clauses decide the forum, the seat and the escalation ladder, and LexVio's benchmarked corpus carries market-standard versions of both for MSAs. Section 28 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 sets the outer limit on what those clauses can do: an agreement that restricts a party from enforcing rights through legal proceedings, or that limits the time within which they may do so, is void.
Once a dispute is live, the special statutes take over from the Limitation Act Schedule. An application to set aside an arbitral award under s.34(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 must be made within three months, extendable by a maximum of thirty days on sufficient cause, 'but not thereafter'. An appeal to the NCLAT under s.61(2) of the IBC is thirty days, condonable by a further period not exceeding fifteen — a hard forty-five-day outer cap. A consumer complaint under s.69 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 is two years, with delay condonable on sufficient cause and reasons recorded.
Insolvency itself is a dispute route. A financial creditor files under s.7 of the IBC and an operational creditor under s.9, after the s.8 demand notice and ten days without payment. Section 14 then declares the moratorium, and s.29A bars defaulters, wilful defaulters, undischarged insolvents and connected persons from submitting a resolution plan. Cheque dishonour under s.138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 runs on its own chained clock: presentation within validity, demand notice within thirty days of the return memo, the drawer's fifteen-day payment window, then the complaint.
The provisions, with their section numbers.
Each row names the dataset it was taken from — the seeded statute library, the compliance calendar's own statutory reference, the bare Limitation Act, or the DPDP research set. Nothing here was written from memory.
Tools that apply to this work.
Each runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and none of them needs an account.
Limitation periods that bite here.
Quoted from the India Code bare Act. The period is only half the answer — the third column of the Schedule, the point from which time begins to run, is what actually decides the date. Each entry sets both out.
Three months; condonable by a maximum further period of thirty days on sufficient cause, 'but not thereafter'.
Chained deadlines: presentation within the cheque's validity (or six months, whichever is earlier); written demand notice within thirty days of the bank's return memo; drawer's fifteen-day payment window; complaint within ONE MONTH of the cause of action arising — the delay in filing the complaint being condonable for sufficient cause.
Thirty days; condonable for sufficient cause by a further period 'not [to] exceed fifteen days' — a hard 45-day outer cap.
Two years; delay condonable on sufficient cause, with the Commission required to record its reasons for condoning.
Three years.
The capabilities that do this work.
Every one of these is a real feature page with its own status — Live, Beta or Soon. If it says Beta, it is in beta.
What-if engines for litigation and contracts — outcome odds, damages, settlement, cheque-bounce, tax, and AI negotiation roleplay.
Judgments from SC, High Courts, NCLT, ITAT, CCI, DRT, and CESTAT.
See how cases cite each other — trace a doctrine forward and back.
Red, amber, or green for every clause, with an explanation and confidence score.
Three-tier extraction cascade so PDF, DOCX, and scanned bilingual contracts all work.
Group contracts, court research, and compliance items by matter.
Semantic + keyword search across every document in your vault.
Conversational Q&A over a single contract or matter with cited answers.
See which clauses are present, missing, or non-standard across your portfolio.
The modules this area draws on.
The people who do dispute resolution work.
Dispute Resolution — the questions people actually ask.
Can a court condone a late application to set aside an arbitral award?
Only up to thirty days beyond the three-month period, and not a day more. Section 34(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 says the extension may be granted on sufficient cause 'but not thereafter'. That phrase is what makes it a ceiling rather than a discretion. The same architecture appears in s.61(2) of the IBC, where the fifteen-day extension produces a hard forty-five-day outer limit.
Does the Limitation Act, 1963 govern these special-statute deadlines?
Only as far as the special law allows. Under the s.29(2) scheme, a special law's own limitation regime governs and can exclude s.5 condonation expressly or by its scheme. The Arbitration Act's 'but not thereafter' and the IBC's fifteen-day cap operate as hard ceilings; the Consumer Protection Act builds its own condonation into s.69(2). The Schedule's rules do not simply carry over.
What does LexVio's cheque-bounce simulator actually do?
The legal simulators are what-if engines covering outcome odds, damages, settlement, cheque-bounce, tax scenarios and AI negotiation roleplay. For cheque bounce specifically, the value is in the chained deadlines under ss.138 and 142 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 — presentation, the thirty-day demand notice, the drawer's fifteen-day window, then the complaint — where a miss at any link ends the prosecution. The simulator is an analytical aid, not a prediction of what a court will do.
Where should the dispute-resolution clause point?
That is a commercial decision, not one this page can make. What LexVio can tell you is where your clause sits against the market: the benchmarked corpus carries a market-standard dispute-resolution clause and a market-standard governing-law clause for MSAs, and clause-level risk scoring flags a clause that is materially off-market with an explanation and a confidence score.
A map of the material, not advice on your matter. These hubs point at statutory text, free calculators and product capabilities. They are not legal advice, they do not create an advocate-client relationship, and they are no substitute for reading the bare Act as currently amended. Indian law is fact- and state-specific — stamp duty, registration and several employment obligations vary by state, and limitation turns on facts a web page cannot know. Take advice on your own facts before acting.
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