About

Over the years GAIL has grown by leaps and bounds and has achieved the coveted status of being a Maharatna company. At the direction of Dr. Subir Bikas Mitra, executive director for law and HR, the legal department has put in place new polices to reduce litigation and increase efficiency as is necessary in a public sector enterprise company. As such, it has introduced a conciliation mechanism that has been a huge success and has helped GAIL in bringing down the pendency of disputes considerably thereby making great savings in reducing the number of frivolous litigations and arriving at a tenable settlement agreements without straining business relations. Mitra highlights that, ‘the mechanism that has been devised is a fool proof mechanism which covers each and every aspect of the conciliation process in order to ensure effective settlement of disputes within the shortest span of time. Unlike litigation, conciliation has proved to be a cost-effective and time-bound mechanism which could only ensure finality in the disputes’. The success of the conciliatory mechanism developed in GAIL has been shared over various public platforms, which has been widely appreciated and various organisations have sought details of the same to implement at their organisational level. To strengthen the litigation mechanism in the company, Mitra has overseen taking on numerous initiatives to develop a robust dispute resolution mechanism in the organisation, which could overcome the shortcomings attached with the term litigations. This has been achieved by addressing problems of fee structures of outside counsel, internal staffing and arbitration payments. The introduction of these initiatives in the company has fetched huge success in streamlining the functionality of not only the in-house legal department, but also other process departments in managing disputes within the organisation. Various other organisations are now copying the procedures and policies developed in GAIL to strengthen their dispute resolution mechanism.