Outlook – July 20, 2019

TAKEOVER BID

The Centre tries to grab ICADR, the premier body for

arbitration. ‘Unconstitutional’, cry luminaries who run it.

Buy Disputes

With This Bill

by Puneet Nicholas Yadav

T

HE International Centre for Alt­

ernative Dispute Resolution

(ICADR) may not ring a bell

with people outside the legal

pro fession, 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 chairp-

er son and a governing council packed

with legal luminaries like Attorney- Gen-

eral K.K. Venugopal, challenged the con-

st i tutionality 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).

Bhardwaj alleges that the current imp-

asse over ICADR began soon after Prasad

took over as law minister in 2016 during

the first term of PM Narendra Modi’s

COVETED The ICADR building in

New Delhi’s Vasant Kunj

22 OUTLOOK 22 July 2019

Photographs: SURESH K. PANDEY