Out of court settlements to be launched? | Fusion - WeRIndia

The government is planning to initiate out of court settlements with the aim of encouraging pre-litigation settlements and reduce court cases. So, the government is considering a new move to bring a law which enables out-of-court settlements to have legislative backing.

At present, mediation process is used to settle marital disputes. If this new law is made, many settlements like problems between landlord-tenant and industrial disputes which form a major chunk of litigations can be solved faster.

The process of mediation should be given legislative backing by giving it a stand-alone law, proposed the Law Ministry. The ministry stated that there is no legislation in the country which gives backing to the mediation process in India. They said that such lacking causes concern for parties regarding the validity of the outcome in the mediation. As a result many parties are interested in a lawyer dominated process of trusting in the formal judicial process.

There are also many stakeholders who have been skeptical about how applicable the process of mediation is to the diverse Indian caseload at the pre-litigation stage. However, it is important to know that if more number of problems are solved out of court with mediation like settlements, then the load on courts will be reduced.

In India, there are already 2.64 crore cases which are in pending status. A note from the Law ministry states that the uncertainty about the effective application of mediation in the pre-litigation stage to cases other than matrimonial disputes and family matters and implementing the same in property, partitions, landlord-tenant, industrial disputes, cases containing elements of a crime has always been there.

At present, the process of mediation in India is handled by the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee established by the Supreme Court. All mediation activities are managed by the High Court of the respective states.

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