T his year marks a decade of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015. As the name suggests, the Act was enacted to reduce delays in resolving commercial disputes in India. It carved out contract-related suits into a separate category called “commercial suits” and empowered state governments to set up dedicated divisions (benches) in high courts and district courts for resolving commercial suits.

Non-commercial suits, such as defamation and family partitions, were retained as “ordinary suits” and were not covered under the Act. The expectation was that such segregation between commercial and ordinary suits, and the creation of dedicated benches to resolve the former, would expedite the disposal of high-value commercial suits across states in India. A decade later, it is time to ask: Has the law d

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