The Supreme Court decided on e-commerce giant Amazon’s pleas against the merger of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail. It will control whether Singapore’s Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award, which is holding the Rs 24,731 crore deal, was valid under Indian law or not.

“So we close the case now, and the judgement is reserved,” a bench of justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said after advocates Harish Salve, and Gopal Subramanium, who are representing FRL and Amazon, closed their submissions in the case. The Supreme court had asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) not to pass the regulatory approvals for the FRL-RRL deal.

“The Supreme Court will decide if EA award comes under section 17 (1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. And if yes, then whether it can be imposed under section 17 (2) (of the Act),” the bench said. The provisions of the Act deal with the interim rules ordered by an arbitral tribunal, and section 17 (1) says: “Unless agreed by the parties, the arbitral tribunal may, on the request of a party, order a party to take any interim measure of security as the arbitral tribunal may consider important in respect of the subject-matter of the dispute.”