KTR calls for time-bound dispute redressal

Telangana government was now focusing on improving the quality of doing business and reducing the cost of doing business, said KT Rama Rao

Hyderabad: With the world looking at the China-plus-1 strategy or India for the rest kind of strategy, Industries Minister KT Rama Rao stressed on the need for introducing long-lasting reforms and ensuring dispute redressal in a time-bound manner.

The Minister said with Telangana being ranked top in terms of Ease of Doing Business, the State government was now focusing on improving the quality of doing business and reducing the cost of doing business. Reduction of cost and time and earning goodwill, this was all part of industrial relations. The Telangana government was more focused on ensuring that there were more satisfied customers with early dispute redressal, he said at the International Arbitration and Mediation Centre (IAMC) Hyderabad fireside chat here on Tuesday.

---

The endless battles of Hyderabad-based industries with prolonged litigation in different courts have taken away not only substantial profits away from their balance sheet but also wasted precious time of their efforts and the judiciary, he said.

“An institution like the International Arbitration centre was extremely beneficial and the State government completely endorsed it. The international centre has made a good beginning and I request to the Registrar and other staff to create more awareness through these sessions” the Minister said.

Having such a Centre in this city makes it very attractive for the State government also from the positioning perspective to bring in more investments. This Centre was not just for mega industries but also for MSMEs who face difficulties and have several disputes at their local level.

There was a provision from the State side from the national MSME Act to set up a facilitation counsel to help the MSMEs. Besides having one facilitation counsel in Hyderabad, the Telangana government created decentralized councils in Warangal, Karimnagar and Nizamabad, the Minister said.

However, there were instances of litigations getting prolonged even at facilitation councils. All efforts would be made to align the functioning of these counsels along with the International Arbitration and Mediation Centre and ensure an alternate dispute redressal mechanism was tried out even for MSMEs, he added.

Recalling that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had led a delegation to Singapore in 2014 to learn about their industrial policy, he said after studying different policies of other countries, the Telangana government introduced TS-iPASS in October 2014.

“We wanted to confer the right on the investors- the right to self-assessment. In 8.5 years, more than 47 billion dollars of investment have been attracted through the policy, including some of the largest data centres in the world” said Rama Rao, pointing out that Amazon’s largest campus was in Hyderabad. It had got all clearances in 11 days and that was the success of TS-iPASS, he said.

On lessons India can learn from Singapore, former Singapore Attorney General Justice VK Rajah said States could reposition themselves to take India to the next level of legal development. “It is my first visit to Hyderabad and I am impressed,” he said, adding that if parties did not have confidence in courts, arbitration would not work. Hyderabad needs to be a premier legal hub, he said.

Telangana High Court Chief Justice Ujjwal Bhuyan said IAMC was trying to establish itself as a global centre domestically and internationally. Businesses in India were still in the shadow of governments. When they come out of the shadow and become corporate in the true sense, then parties would seek institutional arbitration, which would strengthen the economy and contribute to good governance, he said.