Buy Disputes With This Bill

The Centre tries to grab ICADR, the premier body for arbitration. ‘Unconstitutional’, cry luminaries who run it.

- Puneet Nicholas Yadav

THE International Centre for Alt­ernative Dispute Resolution (ICADR) may not ring a bell with people outside the legal profession, but control of this 25­year­old institution, head­ quartered in New Delhi, has become a bone of contention between the Union government and the registered society that has been running it since 1995.

The tug-of-war began earlier this year, when on the intervening night of March 2 and 3, the promulgation of the New Delhi International Arbitration Centre (NDIAC) Ordinance sought to transfer all undertakings of the ICADR to the Union Law Ministry. The ICADR, which has Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi as its chairper son and a governing council packed with legal luminaries like Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance in the Delhi High Court and got a stay order. On July 3, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad introduced a bill in the Lok Sabha seeking to replace the ordinance. On July 8, the Supreme Court refused to entertain the Centre’s plea to vacate the stay granted by the Delhi HC.

The quest for control of an autonomous institution raises obvious questions on the government’s desperation to take over what is essentially a body corporate registered as an autonomous society that operates under the aegis of the SC.

“The ICADR was established to offer an independent platform for arbitration, conciliation and mediation, essentially to corporate entities tied up in legal disputes with the government or other private entities. It received a capital grant of Rs 3 crore from the Union government for construction of its building and has, since, been fully self-sustaining in its expenses. The government now wants to seize its control,” former Union law minister and lifetime patron of ICADR, Hans Raj Bhardwaj, told Outlook (see interview).