Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde on Saturday called for the introduction of a law to ensure that all settlements arrived at in mediation proceedings are binding, and spoke in favour of compulsory pre-litigation mediation to reduce the backlog of cases in courts and save the time of both the courts and litigants.
The CJI was speaking at the third edition of the international conference on Arbitration in the Era of Globalisation, organised by the Indian Council of Arbitration and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
“I think the time is ripe to devise a comprehensive legislation which contains compulsory pre-litigation mediation and a remedy for the biggest drawback in a mediation agreement, that is to say the un-enforceability of an agreement arrived at a mediation, would ensure efficiency and also reduce the time pendency for parties as well as the courts. Maybe if some method could be found for certifying that an agreement has been freely entered into and for making it executable like a degree, mediation could become the most effective ADR (alternative dispute resolution),” he said.
Read more about this at the Hindustan Times here.
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