Whether Arbitration, being ADR, helps corporates in speedy disposal of their disputes?

             Traditionally, if any dispute arises between the parties, the party can inistitute a legal proceeding before the competant court like filing a suit for recovery of money in a civil court. As there are too many cases before court, too many regulations to follow, less staff or insufficient courts and judges, there was an uproar over traditional judiciary that the justice is getting delayed and we often listen to the issue like "justice delayed is nothing but justice delayed".

             If we keep the real issues for the delay in traditional redressel mechanism apart, we mooted the Alternative dispute resolution mechansim. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is the basis for this ADR as of now if don't look at the background. Its with an agreement between or among the parties. If the parties mutually agree to refer their dispute to the alternative dispute resolution mechanism, then, they can refer and the principle like once agreed, the party is not supposed to go back, applies here to. Now a days, every agreement or contract between the parties contains an arbitration clause like if there is any dispute in the course, the same to be referred to arbitrator or the tribunal. If the party ignores the clause, the High Court is empowered to appoint an arbitraror. The advantage of referring the dispute to arbitrator or the Tribunal is that the Arbitrator must only decide the dispute before him and he is at liberty to follow the procedure or as agreed by the parties without ignoring the principles of natural justice.

            Even this arbitration set-up is attacked on the grounds that it is too costly, the interference by the courts is not completely barred, the act is too technical, the party is unnecessary being suffered, the provisions like section 34 of the act is being misused etc. Whatever the difficulties in the course of arbitral proceedings, it can be speedy compared to the traditional dispute redressel mechanism.

           Here the point is that, the corporates can make use of this set-up and as they alwyas try to sortout the differences being the business people, the dispute may get settled before the Arbitraror where the parties are at liberty to more time discussing things. The poor may not afford this arbitration set-up, being costly in some cases, but, the arbitration set-up is reallty useful to the corporates or the companies. It helps in two ways viz., reducing the burden of the traditional courts and the second one is peedy justice delivery to the companies or corproates where stakes can be in crores.

         Thus, undoubtedly, it can be said that the ADR mechanism is helpful to the corporates or the companies in resolving their disputes speedily.