Ajay Thomas

Name: Ajay Thomas
Designation: Visiting Faculty
Education
LLM with specialization in arbitration and maritime laws from the National University of Singapore, LLB from University of Goa. On being admitted to the bar, he practiced mainly on the original side of the Bombay High Court, as junior counsel at the chambers of senior advocate S Venkiteswaran, who was widely regarded as the guru of shipping law in India.
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Ajay is an independent New Delhi based arbitrator who occasionally acts as counsel in arbitrations and arbitration-related litigation. In addition to this, he is a national correspondent for India to the CLOUT system established by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). He also currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the ICC India Arbitration Group and is on the panel of arbitrators of SCOPE, the apex body of Indian public sector enterprises.

He has had the unique privilege of working with three of the world’s leading arbitration institutions and has over 17 years of experience as arbitration administrator, arbitrator and advocate.

From 2009-2016, he was Director and Founding Registrar with the Indian subsidiary of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), and also a member of the LCIA India Board of Directors. Prior to joining the LCIA, Ajay was Counsel with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC). He also served as Assistant Counsel with the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration (SCMA).

Ajay was a member of the expert committee constituted by the Law Commission of India to assist in the preparation of its 246th Report on ‘Amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996’. He played a key role in the planning and execution of the first ‘India Conference’ hosted jointly by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and the Ministry of External Affairs (October 2017). He was also a member of UNCITRAL’s Organising Committee for the two-day international conference held in New Delhi to celebrate 50 years of the establishment of UNCITRAL (November 2016).

He is regularly invited to speak at conferences, seminars and workshops on arbitration, and is a visiting faculty at the Indian Society of International Law (ISIL), New Delhi. He has also been a tutor at arbitration training courses conducted by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb). Ajay is on the International Editorial Board of the Brazilian Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution (RBADR), and a Member of the Executive Committee of the Asia-Pacific Forum for International Arbitration (AFIA).

Area of Expertise:

Arbitration