Cuttack, Nov 20: A mediation centre has been inaugurated in the second floor of Aain Seva Bhawan. The inaugural ceremony was held in the Gatikrushna Misra Auditorium of Odisha Judicial Academy. The event was organised by the High Court of Orissa and Odisha State Legal Services Authority.

Justice Jaswant Singh, Judge, High Court of Orissa and Executive Chairman, Odisha State Legal Services Authority & Chairman, Odisha Judicial Academy delivered the welcome address and focused on the need of training of mediators.

Justice A. M. Khanwilkar stressed on the effectiveness of mediation in the alternative dispute redressal mechanism and told that through mediation holistic justice could be done to the litigants.

Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar, Chief Justice, High Court of Orissa, who is also the Ex-officio Patron-in-Chief of Odisha State Legal Services Authority & Odisha Judicial Academy told about the need to develop the mediation system in Odisha.

Justice Muralidhar referred to Mahatma Gandhi as an ace mediator and recounted how the father of the nation settled his first case as advocate in South Africa through mediation though he had won the same. He told that the permanent resolution of dispute could not be achieved if one of the parties alone won rather it would be achieved if both of them accepted something that is reasonable. He urged the trainee mediators to take inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi.

The inaugural function was followed by the 40 hours mediation training programme. A.J. Jawad, senior trainer from Tamil Nadu and two other potential trainers of MCPC , Rita Das Mazmudar and Suman Sharma from Assam had joined the training programme as resource persons. As many as 30 advocate-mediators participated in the training.

The dignitaries and participants expressed hope that the establishment of state of the art mediation centre and such training programme would go a long way in fulfilling the objective behind alternative dispute redressal mechanism.