Speaking at the international conference on arbitration, Justice T.S. Thakur, Chief Justice of India said that arbitration and mediation had immense importance in the context of the existing judicial structure in the country. He said in this country we have an avalanche of cases that put the entire judicial system under pressure. 18,000 judges throughout the country are required to dispose of 50 million cases, and they have disposed of 20 million cases so far. He laid great stress on the mechanism of arbitration and lamented that Government-run International Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution’s performance is dismal. In two decades it has handled just 20 cases which means that it is non functional.
While touching on the entire gamut of judicial structure, Chief Justice of India has strongly suggested reformation of country’s judicial structure. The practice that is observed today is precisely representing the spirit of the axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. We strongly feel that the ideas to which the Chief Justice has given vent merit a nation-wide debate. We need to reform our structure so that justice is done not only to assuage the hurt feeling of the aggrieved party in dispute but to inject new life and vitality into the veins of our judiciary. Arbitration may not be foolproof. For that matter even court judgments, too, can be and have been faulty at times. That does not mean that we should do away with courts and similarly if arbitration does not work in one or a few cases that does not mean we should discard the mechanism. Once there is emphasis on arbitration and the much liked mechanism to resolve disputes, people will get attracted to it, to try it, and derive benefit from it.
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