A two day National Judicial Conference on ‘Mediation and Information Technology’ was organized by the Hon'ble High Court of Gujarat on 9^th and 10^th April, 2022 at Ekta Nagar, Narmada District, Gujarat.

The Hon’ble President of India, while inaugurating the Conference said that ADR mechanism and the ICT in the Judiciary are important for many reasons as both will help make the system more efficient and thus better able to dispense justice. The Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, in his speech stated that the concept of ADR, through Lok Adalats, Gram Nyayalayas, mediation and arbitration centers, has the potential to transform the legal landscape of India by providing millions of people a platform to settle their grievances. He further stated that imbibing effective ADR mechanisms into the judicial process can reduce pendency, save judicial resources and time, and allow litigants a degree of control over the dispute resolution process and its outcome. He stressed that technology can be beneficially employed by the judicial system. It has the potential to simplify the process. Courts in India have started utilizing technology and various initiatives have been taken up such as E -filing, Computer Assisted Transcription, Document Display System and the integration of Courts under one IT Infrastructure. Recently, the Supreme Court has launched 'FASTER', a digital platform for fast and secured delivery of urgent court orders in encrypted electronic format, to the stakeholders. This would ensure effective implementation of court orders, without any delay.

It is the endeavour of the Government that judiciary and legislature work together in one direction for better coordination for making reforms in the judicial system to reduce the burden of cases and deliver speedy justice. The Government is promoting ADR mechanisms including arbitration and mediation as these mechanisms are less adversarial and are capable of providing a better substitute to the conventional methods of resolving disputes. The use of ADR mechanisms is also expected to reduce the burden on the judiciary and thereby enable timely justice dispensation to citizens of the country.

To enable arbitration as a viable dispute resolution mechanism, the Government has amended the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 in the years 2015, 2019 and 2021. The changes are enabled to signal a paradigm shift for ensuring timely conclusion of arbitration proceedings, minimizing judicial intervention in the arbitral process, enforcement of arbitral awards and strengthening of institutional arbitration in the country. The Commercial Courts Act, 2015 was amended in the year 2018 to provide for Pre-Institution Mediation and Settlement (PIMS) mechanism. Under this mechanism, where a commercial dispute of specified value does not contemplate any urgent interim relief, the parties have to first exhaust the mandatory remedy of PIMS before approaching the Court. This is aimed at providing an opportunity to the parties to resolve the commercial disputes through mediation.

The Government has also introduced the Mediation Bill, 2021, in the Rajya Sabha on 20.12.2021 to enact a standalone law on Mediation. The Bill aims to inter-alia promote, encourage and facilitate mediation for resolution of disputes, commercial or otherwise, enforce mediation settlement agreements and to establish the Mediation Council of India.

Further, ADR mechanisms are resorted outside the courts, hence no court-wise data in this regard is available.

This information was given by the Minister for Law and Justice, Shri Kiren Rijiju in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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RKJ/M

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