Traditional dispute redressal method pays off in Maha villages

A traditional method of dispute redressal at village level, started by Maharashtra government with an aim to solve petty issues among groups, families and communities without having them to approach law courts, has been gaining momentum.
The initiative has so far helped in amicable settlement of lakhs of disputes at village level itself, official sources said.
The 'Mahatma Gandhi Tanta Mukti Gav Muhim' (a campaign to make villages free from disputes), launched by the state government in 2007, has met with success in nearly 17,000 villages in Maharashtra so far, sources said.
Under the method, a committee formed to settle the dispute calls the affected parties and after hearing their grievances suggest them ways to overcome it. After continuous counselling and follow-up, if both parties agree, the dispute is amicably settled by the committee.

For proper screening and monitoring, the state Home Ministry, which directly monitors the campaign, has entrusted the responsibility of judging the villages and districts by a divisional level committee for all seven revenue divisions in Maharashtra.
Each divisional commissioner is head of such a committee, which has district collectors, representatives from zilla parishad and a couple of local journalists as its members.

As many as 12,39,000 disputes were settled in the process, sources said, adding that so far about 16,000 villages have been declared as 'dispute-free'.
In 2008-09, Sangli, Latur, Gondia, Ratnagiri and Bhandara were declared best districts by a state-level committee.

In 2009-10, the villages of Nanded, Pune, Kolhapur, Gondia and Wardha got rid of the local-level disputes.
Wardha, Buldhana, Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar were adjudged as free from disputes in 2010-11 and similarly Bhandara, Washim, Hingoli, Beed and Solapur were found to be free from local disputes in 2011-12, sources added.