Mediation key to dealing with pendency: SC judge

Pune, August 20

Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud has said courts in the country are “extremely burdened and desperately congested”. Given the alarming rate of high pendency of cases, dispute resolution mechanism like mediation is an important tool, he said while delivering Justice YV Chandrachud Memorial Lecture here on Friday.

Numbers rising

• 4.1 crore cases are pending in district & taluka courts
• 59 lakh cases have been pending in high courts
• 71,000 cases await ruling in the apex court

He also inaugurated the Indian Law Society’s ILS Centre for Arbitration and Mediation (ILSCA). The Indian Law Society has entered its centenary year. “According to the study done by PRS Legislative Research, the pendency across all the courts grew by 2.8% annually between 2010 and 2020. During the past two years, the pandemic and the tribulations that it brought to humankind, worsened the already alarming rate of pendency of cases,” Justice Chandrachud said.

The data available indicates that more than 4.1 crore cases are pending in district and taluka courts and approximately 59 lakh cases are pending in different high courts, he said. “As of today, 71,000 cases are pending before the Supreme Court. In view of these numbers, the dispute resolution mechanism like mediation is an important tool in increasing access to justice by providing redress and settlement of disputes in a non-adversarial manner, free from the formalistic procedural practices of the law,” he said.

He said there was no doubt that mediation has risen in prominence all over the world and certainly in India. Parliament recently introduced the Mediation Bill of 2021. “While I do not want to comment on the provisions of the bill, passionate feedback and response of various stakeholders to the provisions of the Bill, clearly show that mediation as the method of dispute resolution has come of age. Even internationally, India has indicated its strong commitment to alternate dispute resolution (ADR) by becoming one of the first group of signatories to the Singapore Convention on Mediation,” he said, adding that the Singapore Convention on Mediation was the right step in the direction of ensuring the enforcement of international mediation settlement agreement.