‘We rely on adverse system’. Photo Credit: Getty Image/ISTOCKPhoto
Every Chief Justice of India is the audience of the backlog of the legal system coming to the office of the Chief Justice, who persecutes him or it, as every senior and related members of the higher judiciary. This is a ever current event – currently, There are 82,000 cases in India’s Supreme CourtHigh courts of over 62 lakhs, and lower courts are close to five crore. About 50 million cases have been pending for more than 10 years.
This is an adverse system
It is not that our judges are not hard work or skilled; Most of them are. But we are a country with a large population that is used to think that the court will resolve disputes with the fact that whatever happens – neighbor, shareholder, supplier, government, et al. We have one of the lowest judges of population ratio – 21 judges for each million citizens. And we rely on the adverse system which means that in fact every case sees many interim applications during its passage, and the plural appeals after crossing the first route. We have a lack of infrastructure and capacity in terms of brick and mortar, and finance and human resources. Just going to the judiciary on functional mode is an Hercuulian work-it is so harder to you that improvement and restructuring, while certainly well meaning and something well thought out, rarely for the system game Get prominence and push- changing.
Data governance is an area where intelligent classification avoids repeating connectivity and will create for quick disposal. Appointment of retired judges to serve in ad hoc capacity helps limit the situation to a limited extent. Comprehensive perspective solutions will require to focus on large swaths of litigation, for example, the landlord tenant should investigate the cases of disputes and bounce, to see if the law should be held to court. Can be less profitable for. The compensatory or even punitive costs are usually used to prevent trivial or unnecessary litigation abroad. We rarely use them because we reach justice and want to avoid obstacles.
The elephant in the room is definitely the government. Being a player in almost half the controversies in court, improvement will be stopped until it learns less litigation and becomes more responsible for settlement options. Hope on this subsequent score, but for now, we proceed to another possibility for improvement.
It is the huge backlog, the huge waiting room, its cavens vaults and storage shelves and racks with millions of citizens and reasons to be exploded with claims of redressal and justice. Staying here for a long time denies justice. Sometimes when the case is dusty for delivery on the table of the judge, it forgets the cause or less important, or the original proposors are in another world, hopefully a litigation -free. But this is the audience of incomplete business, a very clear sign of delivery failure, which hunts judges. Nothing is good about backlog.
Pitch for mediation
But maybe. As it may be first at first, it can be another example of a problem yet masking a solution. Let us consider the process of mediation. In the newborn and fleeing in the 1990s, mediation began to make a mark in India in 2005, mainly as an assistant to the court area. The leadership and judge of the lawyer directed, provided an opportunity to sit with a trained neutral for disputes, in the atmosphere of privacy, with no results; Parties simply guide and naked the parties to come up with options for a practical, fair and mutually acceptable solution. Long -term interests, for some legal realism and disposal, rather than focusing on a dose of serious options leads to a change to attack the other to attack the problem jointly. The cases come from a health of civil and commercial, personal and property, and marital and business disputes.
The results are encouraging. So adoption prepared by the bar of this option (now enrolled as suitable) is the method of dispute solution, as seen by thousands of interested intermediaries. Now it is to go to full professional routes, draw in better use than business, government and other disputes, and in this process, providing beneficial remuneration to doctors of this new business. But of course, arbitration has caught in the judicial system, and there is hardly any judge who does not talk about its merits and how this is the future method.
Getting to do it
So, to go to this point, finally. Backlog is a burden for the judge. For the mediator, it is a treasure. There are hundreds of cases hidden in front of us, or in the court cell of the court, which have to be assigned to the mediators to handle. And the mediators are in sufficient numbers and are supported by years of experience. All need these cases have a simple system of primary identity, ask parties to select their mediator or to do a trained and experienced assign, and make sure that a fair fee is paid for service . When you compare the cost of mediation of a case, for the system and for parties, this is a part of that case. You do not need a huge logical and administrative infrastructure, and you save many hearing spread in an indefinite -time span. Most of the cases in mediation take only a few sessions; Complex people take more, but this is nothing when compared to the boxes of litigation papers to deal with and swallow the calendar. And when it works, the results obtained in mediation can be anything that you can achieve in litigation – not only a practical solution that both sides accept, but often restore relationships.
Therefore, perhaps it’s time that we take the keys, resume our Chamber of Horres as a birthplace for mediation, and apply the principle by which the mediator remains and works – the problem – the problem Change into opportunity for solution.
Shriram Panchu is a senior advocate and founding president, mediator India
Published – February 22, 2025 12:16 AM IST