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Supreme Court to prepare national mediation plan

Special Correspondent

— Photo: K. V. Srinivasan

FOCUS ON MEDIATION: (From left) Madras High Court Judge F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla, Chief Justice H.L. Gokhale, Supreme Court Judge S.B. Sinha and Madras High Court Judge K. Raviraja Pandian at the inauguration of a training programme in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI: Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee of the Supreme Court will prepare a national mediation plan, which will be submitted to the government, said Justice S.B. Sinha, Judge Supreme Court and Chairperson of the Committee. here on Friday.

Inaugurating a three-day mediation training programme for advocates from Erode, Justice Mr. Sinha said the plan would include providing honorarium for trained mediators. The committee was also planning to create a corpus. The plan would be prepared and submitted to the government within the next two months.

The number of pending cases had increased 12 fold since 1978, which at present stood at 3 crore cases in the country. It would be 24 crore cases by 2030 for which a total of 82,000 Judges were required. Similarly, the infrastructure for judiciary needed to be improved at least by 10 per cent, he said.

Talking about registering cases in the courts, Justice Mr. Sinha said nearly 24 cases per 1,000 persons were registered in Tamil Nadu annually, where the literacy rate is 76 per cent.

In Kerala it was 27 cases per 1,000 persons annually, where the literacy rate is 96 per cent. Whereas in the US 333 cases per 1,000 persons were registered in a year.

Mediators tried to probe the source of the dispute. They (mediators) were aware on how to generate options and consider the causes of a dispute. In the next five years 20,000 trained mediators would be engaged by the judiciary in the country, he added. Mediation had made a great stride all over the country, said Justice H.L. Gokhale, Chief Justice, Madras High Court and Patron-in-Chief of the Tamil Nadu Mediation and Conciliation Centre.

Praising the State for leading the mediation and conciliation process, he said some of the States in the country were lagging behind in this regard. Mediation was a way of bringing in an amicable settlement among different parties, he said.

One should have the right kind of mindset to undergo mediation training, said Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla, Judge Madras High Court and Chairman, Tamil Nadu Mediation and Conciliation Centre.

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