Who we are

  1. Home
  2. »
  3. Who we are

Council for National and International Commercial Arbitration, shortly known as CNICA, under the aegis of the Trust for Alternative Disputes Resolution was formed in the year 2004, under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, registered as Doc.No.135 of 2004, Office of Joint I, Sub – Registrar, in the Cadre of the District Registrar of Chennai North, with a non-profit motive to serve the society at large to resolve the legal disputes by providing Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services such as, arbitration, mediation and conciliation. CNICA is administered by the experienced lawyers having extensive and expertise knowledge in ADR practice. CNICA is the first institutional arbitration centre in the State of Tamil Nadu and one of the few arbitration institutions in India when it was founded in the year 2004 and that CNICA has been providing services for about 17 years to the utmost satisfaction of litigants/ disputants.

CNICA had framed its own Rules namely CNICA Arbitration Rules, 2004 which contain the procedure for arbitration and the fee has been prescribed for arbitrators and arbitration institution and that the Rules have been modified recently in 2020 in consonance with the major amendments which were taken place in the year 2015 and 2019. The rules of CNICA provides for emergency arbitration, expedited arbitration process to name a few.

CNICA has a web portal www.cnica-odr.com for resolving disputes through online (ODR) and having CNICA Rules for ODR, 2020 separately. CNICA has its panel of arbitrators consisting Hon’ble Judges of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts (retired), eminent Lawyers, Engineers, Chartered Accountants, etc. CNICA has been the appointing authority in its institutional arbitration, conciliation and mediation cases apart from providing venue for adhoc arbitration/conciliation/mediation cases through its state of art venues both at Armenian Street, Near High Court and at Anna Salai (Mount Road), Chennai. That apart, CNICA has been periodically conducting study circle, meetings, seminars, webinars and conferences for promoting the ADR services.

CNICA has entered MoU with various international and national organisation for arbitration co-operation. CNICA has been listed as an arbitration institution by the Ministry of Law and Justice – Department of Legal Affairs, Union of India and UNCITRAL , United Nations.