Acting Chief Justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court C. Praveen Kumar said that institutional arbitration, a time-bound method of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), is a more friendly method to the litigants at a time when pendency of cases has become a cause for concern. Justice Praveen Kumar was addressing the engineers and staff of the Roads & Buildings department after inaugurating the two-day workshop on ADR methods organised by The International Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ICADR) at the department headquarters in the city on Tuesday.
“We come across news about courts flooded with cases and pendency at judicial forums. The authorities felt that they should have an alternate method to dispose of the cases at the earliest and arbitration is one such. Also, there are other ADR methods like Lok Adalat which will be held once in a week and month and the cases are settled only with the compromise of both parties and when cases are referred to it. Mostly matrimonial and accident claim cases are dealt there,” he said.
“Arbitration is more friendly towards a litigant. If any dispute is sought to be referred to arbitration, the choice is of the party to select an arbitrator and place where they want to conduct the arbitration. In recent amendments, the time, fee and the maximum number of adjournments have been fixed and limited making it easy for the litigant to get the case disposed of at an early stage in a cost-effective manner. Also, the scope of interference by the higher authority with the award passed by the arbitrator is very limited,” Justice Praveen said.
ICADR regional centre in-charge and secretary J.L.N. Murthy said that ICADR forum in Hyderabad has taken up 942 cases so far and 494 of them were related to family disputes.
The government has allotted one acre land for ICADR in Thulluru of Amaravati and construction would begin soon, he said.
