The Supreme Court (SC), while dealing with the issue of whether an arbitration agreement can bind even a non-signatory party, has held that following the ‘group of companies’ doctrine, it is not necessary that only persons who are signatories to the arbitration agreement will be bound by the arbitration agreement. The SC, further opined that, “underlying basis for the application of the ‘group of companies’ doctrine rests on maintaining the corporate separateness of the group of companies while determining the common intention of the parties to bind non-signatories to the arbitration agreement.”
