law and the legal process aim to regulate human conduct. One of the important aspects of regulation is dispute resolution. The formal mode of judicial determination and related process has been slow and cumbersome. Therefore, resorting to new modes of dispute, resolution has become a necessity which is less formal and where the time taken is short.
Mediation is one such alternate mode of dispute resolution. Though the clause of mediation has been existent in the Civil Procedure Court of India since 1908 but it was as late as 1987 when the legal Services Authority Act recognized and appreciated the value of mediation and incorporated the implementable mode of this to the CPC.
It provided for creating statutory bodies for mediation called “Mediation Centres” both at the State levels and the district levels. The objective of these centres was to promote out of court settlements by providing free legal aid to public. It was the voluntary initiative of a few practising lawyers in some of the High Courts in this country in 2002 which brought on ground the reality of Mediation Centres.
Mediation centres were then physically established in some of the High Courts and have since been functioning. This path of resolving disputes is slowly gaining momentum and is getting synergised by the very fact that wherever the court can apparently see elements of mutual resolution in litigation they recommend and also direct the litigants to come through the mediation channel.
The new generation lawyering involves skilled exercises in such alternate modes of settlement. UPES has taken the initiative of providing the students of BAllB & BBAllB with direct experiential learning of mediation by organizing a six-day workshop on mediation in two phases under the leadership of Dr Tabrez Ahmed — Prof & Associate Director of College of legal Studies in UPES and his team.
Arun Dhand — Director (Media Affairs) informed that this workshop was conducted for 161 students by grouping them in 16 batches and was conducted by experts and legal luminaries which included Mr Niranjan Bhatt — Sr. Counsel, Ahmedabad High Court ; JP Singh — Sr Advocate, Delhi High Court ; Sadhna Ramachandran – Practising Advocate in Supreme Court ; Veena Ralli – Practising Advocate in Delhi High Court and Rita Kohli – Additional Advocate General- Government of Punjab, also accompanying these experts were three interns which included Hamsini Shankar from Delhi University , Karina Hwang and Sophia Cullen from California.