The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to appraise the Court with its intended legislation on mediation while hearing the petition seeking directions or guidelines to provide for mandatory pre-litigation mediation across the country.
A three-judge bench of the Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian while hearing the matter asked, “Where is Union of India, we want the Union of India because we have information that the Union is considering drafting a legislation on mediation in this regards.”
The petition has been filed by Youth Bar Association of India seeking directions to the Centre to consider the necessity of provision for ‘Pre-Litigation Mediation’ and take appropriate measures to provide for mandatory ‘Pre-litigation mediation’. It has also sought directions to issue guidelines or lay Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to give immediate effect the functioning of ‘Pre-Litigation Mediation’.
The petitioner, ’Youth Bar Association of India’ is an association of public spirited, young and vigilant lawyers of India registered under the Society Registration Act.
The Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for the Central Government submitted that he will inform the Court regarding the same within two to three days.
The petition mentioned that the total number of cases pending before the courts in India is 3.24 billion as on 24 May, 2020, of which 32% cases are less than one-year-old. These data are issued by the ‘National Judicial Data Grid’ (NJDG). As per the data issued by the NJDG out of total pending cases 9.114 million are civil cases in which 34.25% cases are one year old; about 44.76% cases are 1-5 years old. The aggregate cases that are 5-6 years old are 14.31%. There are cases which are pending for disposal for thirty years or more. The category of cases which falls in the range of 20 to 30 years constitute 1.15% of the pendency and 0.37% case falls in the category of cases that are more than thirty years old.
The petitioner (YBAI)Youth Bar Association having regard to the increasing rate of pendency of cases in courts have suggested the use of alternate dispute resolution in order to control frivolous and vexatious matters coming up for litigation by affording an opportunity to parties to come together and settle their disputes amicably before any litigation can commence.
Highlighting the purpose of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and the Civil procedure Code, 1908 particularly Section 89 of CPC, the petitioner has submitted that “with the introduction of these provisions, a mandatory duty has been cast on the civil courts to endeavor for settlement of disputes relegating the parties to an ADR process. The object of introduction of Section 89 was to ensure that courts make an endeavor to facilitate out-of-court settlement through any of the five ADR methods as referred to in Section 89: (a) Arbitration, (b) Conciliation, (c) Judicial settlement, (d) Settlement through Lok Adalat, and (e) Mediation.”
Referring to a 2013, judgement of the Supreme Court in K.Srinivas Rao vs D.A. Deepa, in which the court had directed to set up Pan India Mediation centers in order to settle matrimonial disputes at pre-litigative stage where only three High Courts despite complied with the directions, the petitioner has prayed for institutionalized pre-litigation mediation model for Youth Bar Association of India.
The bench while allowing an intervention application filed by Advocate Arvind Datar, listed the matter for further hearing to next week.
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