The Hindu Business Line : Construction firms seek faster dispute resolution

CONSTRUCTION CONCLAVE: Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, with Mr Ajit Gulabchand, Chairman, CII National Committee on Construction and President, Construction Federation of India, at the 5th Construction Summit in the Capital on Wednesday. - Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi May 16 Claiming that Rs 50,000 crore is locked in disputes, the construction industry today called for setting up a faster dispute resolution mechanism for large infrastructure projects.

The figure is indicative of all construction projects across various sectors.

At a construction summit organised by CII, experts suggested various methods to speed up the settlement of disputes, including clubbing all similar disputes to a single dispute resolution board (DRB) and having a Ministry-linked regulator or a tribunal.

Mr Deepak Dasgupta, former NHAI Chairman, said: "The Government and industry could together set up a National Highways Arbitration Board with a mix of judicial and technical members. The board could decide on procedural rules for conduct of arbitration."

Stating that different DRB panels give different orders on similar disputes, Mr R.S. Mahalaha, Senior Vice-President of Nagarjuna Construction, suggested that all disputes of a common nature be routed to a single DRB.

Mr Rohit Modi, Vice-President (Development Projects) of L&T, said that the sector could learn from the telecom sector - which has a regulator and a tribunal.

The industry rued that the most of the DRBs and arbitration decisions are challenged in the judiciary.

However, the Government representatives in the seminar said that the industry itself is responsible for not adhering to the DRB decision in case it goes against them.

"We did an analysis of challenged arbitration proceedings - almost 50 per cent of cases were challenged by NHAI, while 50 per cent of cases were challenged by the private contractor," said Mr Nirmaljit Singh, Member (Technical) of NHAI.

More Stories on : Real Estate & Construction | Courts/Legal Issues

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page