MUMBAI, Jan 28: The ministry of commerce has recommended that state CHIEF secretaries and heads of public sector units opt for institutional arbitrage, instead of ad hoc arbitration. This was disclosed by the Indian Council of Arbitration (ICA) executive director GK Kwatra at the four-day workshop on `Mediation and Conciliation' here on Tuesday."We have been encouraging institutional arbitration as it not only saves the cost of litigation, but also because the arbitrator is properly supervised as against ad-hoc arbitration, where there is no control over the arbitrator," he said.According to him, the ICA has the infrastructure to service the industry for arbitration purposes.Decks are also cleared to create a new community of arbitrators from the existing professions including law and medicine.To start with, the ICA is conducting a workshop on the mediation and conciliation process in all the metros in association with the Australia India Council.
Twelve judges participated at the workshop held in Delhi,while five are participating at the Mumbai workshop."The participation of the judges is a breakthrough, as without the co-operation of the judiciary, it will not be possible to making arbitration proceedings a successful route for settling business disputes," Kwatra added.
The Mumbai high court chief justice MB Shah, in his inaugural speech, emphasised on the role of conciliators and mediators. According to him, they must be impartial, independent, respectable and knowledgeable persons, who can intervene in the matter and try to resolve the dispute in a just and equitable manner.
He felt the conciliators must also be well-versed in law so that the rights of the parties in accordance with the law can be easily determined. Shah said corporate entities including banks and insurance companies should first refer the matter to conciliators or mediators before filing legal proceedings and thereafter, the matter could be referred to arbitrators.
In matters where a dishonest litigant refuses to cooperate witharbitration proceedings, he suggested that such issues be tried at the earliest and heavy cost imposed if he failed to establish his case in the court. ICA vice-president DM Popat said after the enactment of the new law of arbitration, wherein court intervention in the proceedings was minimised, responsibilities of arbitral institutions had risen.Popat also appreciated the government's move to initiate certain amendments to the Civil Procedure Code to reduce litigation in civil cases by adopting atlernative dispute-resolution mechanism including arbitration.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
