August 09, 2025, New Delhi: ‘SULJHAO MAGAR PYAAR SE’ – The Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute, as described in its Preamble, SAMA, hosted the Indian Mediation Week at the India International Centre on Raksha Bandhan Eve. The Event started with an introduction by Pranjal Sinha, the Co-founder, who took a flash from the movie ‘Damini’, citing ‘Tareek Pe Tareek’, and referred to an incident from 2015 when he asked about the difficulties in getting dates at the Court from Justice Pinaki. That incident led to the development of a full-fledged platform, “ODR”, meant for out-of-court dispute resolution. With its first edition of Indian Mediation Week (IMW) organised in Calcutta in 2017, to later appearing on Shark Tank Season 3, SAMA has settled over 52 lac cases through ODR.
The lamp lighting was done by the Chief Guest of the event, Justice Naveen Chawla, who presided over the stage and affirmed to idea of ‘why go to courts’. Referring to the ideology of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman judge of the US Supreme Court, he emphasised that the matter should be resolved through an adversarial method instead of going to the courts. Praising SAMA for creating awareness on the ODR / Mediation by organising this event, Justice Chawla highlighted that there is a big burden on the mediators to show their wherewithal, and not simply dictate as ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’. Further emphasising its physical infrastructure, he questioned the audience as to why the mediation is limited to the settlement of commercial disputes, and not extended to family and civil disputes. He added that the full potential of the ODR can be achieved through 3 things, i.e., awareness, training of mediators who shall convince their clients to avoid the fatigue of litigation, and infrastructure. Before leaving the stage, he was felicitated by Akshetha Ashok, the Co-founder of SAMA.
The next guest of the event was Dr. Manoj Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Law & Justice, who discussed the challenges faced by the growing pendency of cases, and pointed out that those disputes related to tenancy, finances, and commercial costs require “neutral space to resolve”, instead of going to the courts. He emphasised the adoption of a less adversarial and more human-centric approach, along with an embedded ODR module, as a pre-litigation option in the regulatory disputes sphere by the SEBI, the RBI, and the IRDAI. To achieve this, Dr. Kumar suggested three measures, which included i) Building Blocks, meaning not only physical space, but digital infrastructure in all the government departments; ii) Capacity Building, meaning avoiding nuances of communication; and iii) Awareness, meaning ODR should be adopted as a natural and first point of dispute resolving. Praising mediation-centric ODR brought about by SAMA as a game changer, Dr. Kumar talked of more focus towards mediation unless an element of criminality is involved.
The limelight of the evening went ahead with a question-and-answer session between Mr. Sriram Panchu, Senior Advocate and Mediator, and Ms. Akshetha Ashok, co-founder of SAMA. When he was asked how he got into mediation, his grounded answer that his objective was not limited to winning or losing for his clients, but he wanted their lives should improve, left everyone feeling emotionally contained. Towards the second question as to whether he thinks himself to be a good mediator, he answered in the affirmative, stating that while listening to his clients, he empathizes with them, and recalled a case back in 2005 when he first started the mediation centre at Chennai, whereafter announcing the threshold, one of his client expressed that “this is not an ordinary room, but a room of god”. Towards the question of improvement of the mediation system, he pointed out permitting the training of fresh law graduates as mediators, since the growing pendency and backlog would be a treasure. Talking about the mediation landscape in India, he called for applause for the private initiative adopted by SAMA, and said that mediation brings out the best in lawyers.
Then began the moderation session with Mr. Nilanjan Sinha, the General Counsel of ICICI Bank, one of India’s largest private sector banks, and the Panellists, which included Mr. A.S. Chandhiok, a Senior Advocate and the former Additional Solicitor General of India and President of the Delhi High Court Bar Association; Ms. Priya Hingorani, a Senior Advocate and the former Vice President of the Supreme Court Bar Association; Mr. Avnit Singh Arora, a Director in the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice; Mr. Manish Lamba, the General Counsel of DLF; and Ms. Pallavi Pratap, the Managing Partner at Pratap & Co, a former investment banker and an Advocate-on-Record at the Supreme Court of India.
While the discussion between Mr Chandhiok and Mr Arora continued to elicit more elaboration on ODR and the simplification of legal language, Ms Pratap discussed OTS (one-time settlement) in insolvency proceedings and explained the disposal of cases under Section 7(9) applications in the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, 2016. Moving ahead, Mr Lamba, as well as Mr Chandhiok, pointed out that resorting to the generation of physical infrastructure at this stage will render the mediation pause, and emphasised that the current law schools are enough for leveraging and expanding the scope of mediation.
Ms. Hingorani talked about the rules of ethics for the mediators, whereas Mr. Lamba emphasised that the mediation as a matter is too serious to be left to the lawyers alone. He pointed out that something from the framework is to be left to the commercial world, because that will bring the valuation. When Mr. Nilanjan questioned about the criticism of Section 12A, Mr. Lamba explained that forced mediation won’t work, and commercial frustration shall be avoided. After the matter goes to mediation, it should not be used as another tool to frustrate, considering time and value of money, and rather it should be used as a parallel mechanism if it runs in parallel.
In a hugely successful event in Mumbai, also for the SAMA’s Indian Mediation Week, Justice Ghokale emphasized that the time is right for Indian banks and NBFCs to adopt this model – embedding mediation clauses in loan agreements, training officers in negotiations, and partnering with credible institutions such as Sama, who is at the forefront of driving innovations in the dispute resolution space. At the same time, Mr. Batra, Executive Director, ICICI Bank laudably appreciated that the story of Sama is in a way the story of India- young, never say die, using technology to do something relevant from a societal perspective. What Sama has done is visible to all of us, and he congratulated them.
The session ended with the vote of thanks to the panellists and felicitation by Vikesh Dhyani, Co-founder and Director of OakBridge Publishing.
The Knowledge Partner for the event was ICICI Bank, and the Supporting Partners were Lawctopus, The Bar Bulletin, Sadgamaya, Builders Association of India and M&J Services.