Untitled

<form:errors path="username">
     <div class="errorMessage"><form:errors path="username" htmlEscape="false" /></div>
</form:errors>

Duplicate local variable messages.

<%@ page language="java" import="java.util.*" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" %>
<%
String path = request.getContextPath();
String basePath = request.getScheme()+"://"+request.getServerName()+":"+request.getServerPort()+path+"/";
%>

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
  <head>
  </head>

  <body>
    <h1><spring:message code="user.registration.heading"/></h1>

    <form:form action="" modelAttribute="user" method="POST">

        <form:errors path="*">
            <div><spring:message code="error.global"/></div>
        </form:errors>

        <!-- for username -->
        <div>
            <div style="display: inline-block; width: 100px;">
                <spring:message code="user.registration.label.username" />
            </div>
            <div style="display: inline-block;">
            <form:input path="username" />
                <form:errors path="username">
                    <div class="errorMessage"><form:errors path="username" htmlEscape="false" /></div>
                </form:errors>
            </div>
        </div>


        password: <form:input path="password" />   <form:errors path="password"/><br/>
        confirm password: <form:input path="confirmPassword" />  <form:errors path="confirmPassword"/> <br/>
        name: <form:input path="name" />   <form:errors path="name"/><br/>
        email: <form:input path="email" />   <form:errors path="email"/><br/>
        department: <form:input path="department" />  <form:errors path="department"/>. <br/>
        <input type="submit" value="Register" />
    </form:form>

  </body>
</html>

<!-- <form:errors/> -->
<tag>
   <name>errors</name>
   <tag-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.tags.form.ErrorsTag</tag-class>
   <body-content>JSP</body-content>
   <description>Renders field errors in an HTML 'span' tag.</description>
   <variable>
      <name-given>messages</name-given>
      <variable-class>java.util.List</variable-class>
   </variable>