Contract Management

E-stamping is the electronic process of paying non-judicial stamp duty in India, replacing the traditional system of physical stamp paper purchased from licensed vendors. Instead of a watermarked paper sheet, the payer receives a computer-generated certificate carrying a Unique Identification Number (UIN) that can be verified online, making the certificate tamper-proof and instantly verifiable.

Every organisation that transacts with the outside world manages two distinct categories of contracts: buy-side contracts, where the organisation is procuring goods or services, and sell-side contracts, where the organisation is providing goods or services to customers. The distinction sounds simple, but the two categories carry different objectives, different stakeholders, and different risk profiles, and most organisations manage them through separate teams and separate systems, which creates silos and missed opportunities for alignment.

A standard contract is a pre-written agreement in which the terms and conditions are set in advance by one party, typically the party with greater bargaining power, and offered to the other party on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with little or no opportunity to negotiate individual terms. Standard contracts are also known as adhesion contracts, boilerplate contracts, or form contracts.

A user agreement is a legally binding contract between a service provider, such as a website, app, or online platform, and the individuals who use it. It defines the rules, rights, and obligations that govern the relationship between the platform and its users, covering everything from acceptable use and intellectual property to liability limitations and dispute resolution.

Consumer rights are the legal protections available to individuals who purchase goods or services. In India, consumer rights are primarily governed by the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, which replaced the earlier Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The 2019 Act significantly strengthened consumer protections, expanded the definition of consumer, introduced new remedies, and created new regulatory bodies to address the challenges of modern commerce, particularly e-commerce and digital markets.

Article 32 of the Indian Constitution is the constitutional provision that gives every citizen the right to approach the Supreme Court of India directly for the enforcement of fundamental rights. It is one of the most significant provisions of the Constitution, describing it as its “heart and soul,” as Dr B.R. Ambedkar called it during the Constituent Assembly debates.

An arbitration clause is a provision in a contract that requires the parties to resolve disputes arising from the contract through arbitration rather than through court litigation. It is one of the most commercially significant provisions in any commercial contract and one of the most frequently negotiated.

A wet ink signature is a handwritten signature applied directly to a physical document using a pen. The term comes from the literal ink that is wet immediately after signing. It distinguishes a traditional handwritten signature from digital or electronic signatures applied to documents in electronic form.

DPDPA compliance refers to an organisation’s adherence to the requirements of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, India’s first comprehensive data protection legislation. The Act governs the processing of digital personal data in India and establishes a framework of rights for individuals and obligations for organisations that process their data.

Force majeure is a contractual provision that excuses one or both parties from performing their contractual obligations when an extraordinary event beyond their control prevents or impedes performance. The term comes from French, meaning “superior force”, and refers to events that are so unusual and unforeseeable that they fall outside the normal risks that contracting parties are expected to bear.

A bilateral contract is a contract in which both parties make promises to each other. Each party is both a promisor and a promisee: one party promises to do something, and the other party promises to do something in return. The mutual exchange of promises is what gives a bilateral contract its name and what distinguishes it from a unilateral contract, where only one party makes a promise.

Common contract issues are the ones that appear repeatedly in the same forms, in the same clause types, across contracts of different types and sizes. They are common not because they are obvious but because they are easy to overlook under time pressure, because business teams accept language from counterparties without understanding the implications, and because legal review is sometimes performed without a systematic checklist.