The Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industry has set up a new premises for its Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation Centre with arbitration rooms equipped with digital conferencing facility and other facilities. It was one of the first few organisations to provide arbitration services and has been providing this service from 2000 in its own premises in Chennai.

The centre provides arbitration services for disputes arising out of commercial transactions between parties willing or agreeing to abide by the judgment and decision of the chamber. The aim is to promote quick, cost effective, transparent arbitration, mediation and conciliation services, the chamber said.

Justice Sanjay K Kaul, Judge, Supreme Court of India, virtually inaugurated the centre’s new premises on Monday. Both mediation and arbitration are excellent modes of dispute resolution. They will ease the system of the main legal system and provide an excellent opportunity in a methodology to resolve disputes in a better manner. The centre is primarily dealing with commercial disputes - that are best resolved in an environment, which is possibly more informal before people who understand the commerce and who may be specialists in each field, he said in his speech.

Any society is bound to have differences of perceptions. Dispute resolution mechanism, which is an amicable method of resolving the difference of perceptions. There is an organised legal system that takes care of the resolution disputes, but it has been found not to be fully adequate in dealing with the vast area of litigation, which arises. The system has been looking to alternate methods of dispute resolutions, he said.

“I have always been and will continue to be a great votary of mediation. I feel that different methodologies which are gaining ground are resolving even commercial disputes through a process of mediation, if not so followed by arbitration,” he said.