An emergency arbitrator provides urgent interim relief — an injunction to preserve assets, stop a breach in progress, or maintain the status quo — before the full arbitral tribunal has even been constituted, which under normal timelines can take four to eight weeks.
Institutional rules providing for emergency arbitrator proceedings typically allow an application to be filed alongside or immediately after the notice of arbitration, with an emergency arbitrator appointed within days and a decision on interim relief following shortly after, often without waiting for the full tribunal.
Emergency arbitrator orders are generally treated as interim measures under Section 17 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 once the main tribunal is constituted and can adopt or vary them, giving the emergency order real enforceability rather than leaving it as a purely contractual undertaking between the parties.