SAMA Hosts The 6th Indian Mediation Week

To ease the growing burden on India's judiciary, Mediation is an accessible alternative whose awareness remains critically low. This gap in awareness is the chief problem IMW seeks to address while also recognising the efforts of those who are contributing to the access-to-justice movement. Since its inception, IMW has conducted over 2400 ADR awareness drives across 102 cities in India.

Now in its sixth edition, the key supporters to IMW included Vahura and Lawsikho. IMW saw talks seeking to bring more people within the fold of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and Mediation through workshops with lawyers and law students highlighting the incredible opportunities available for lawyers, law students, engineers, enterprises & state authorities. The workshops were held at Mumbai and Bangalore with the aim to inform lawyers, law students, among others of the benefits of mediation and conciliation as a process to dispose disputes in a timely manner, and the opportunities Sama creates for lawyers and law students who seek to enter the field of mediation.

The enterprise round table on ODR was held at Taj Lands End, Mumbai which was inaugurated by Mr. Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs; and was graced by Mr. Dinesh P. Surana, Member Secretary, Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority. The keynote speech was from Mr. Pramod Rao, the Executive Director, Securities and Exchange Board of India. Other notable speakers included Atul Pathak, Ugro Capital, Manish Jain, Ninjacart, Mr. Nilanjan Sinha, ICICI Bank, who spoke about the potential of ODR as an enabler for enterprises to avoid litigation completely and as a tool for dispute prevention. The focus was also on how ODR can help in resolving pending consumer disputes across India.

In his video message, Mr. Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs said: We took the help of entities like Sama to resolve long-pending disputes and we are happy that they did a good job in terms of out reach. We hope we can use such intermediaries in a very efficacious way so that disputes get resolved. Mediation is the key, and if we have a good structure, we can reduce pendency of cases. Mediation has to be pursued, I am a great fan of mediation.

ODR has also seen to be very effective in Online Lok Adalats. In his opening address, Mr. Dinesh P. Surana, Member Secretary, Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority said: Right from Hon'ble Supreme Court to High Courts, and we at MSLSA and other authorities, want that ODR platforms should be used for the resolution of disputes. At present if you calculate traffic challan, more than 50 lakhs cases are settled in the last Lok Adalats, and the recovery amount is Rs. 250 Crores. We started our ODR journey through Sama and we are thankful to SAMA as before, our judicial fraternity was scared to go ahead with any ODR platform and we thought this is the most beautiful platform to resolve disputes. In the future, we cannot think of giving a go-by to this platform.

IMW closed with the "Resolutionary of the Year" ceremony at the Bangalore Creative Circus where the top performing ODR professionals- Mediators, Arbitrators and Case Managers were felicitated by Mr. Sachin Malhan, Co-founder of Agami.