Chief Justice BS Chouhan and other dignitaries at zonal lok adalat seminar at Berhampur on Saturday.
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Berhampur (Orissa): Dr. Justice BS Chouhan, Chief Justice of Orissa High Court while speaking at a seminar here opined that there was large number of pending cases in the courts. If the registration of cases would be stopped from today and the process to solve and dispose the pending cases are began, then it would take 300 years to dispose all the pending cases.
CJ Chouhan while speaking at the seminar 'Mediation- an instrument in quick dispensation of justice' here in the city on Saturday, said that though there were large number of laws and volumes, there was no book to define two words- 'law' and 'justice' and it had been changing from time to time.
Even today, there prevail 'tit for tat' in the country, particularly in Rajasthan where people do believe in traditional way of providing justice and solving the problems. They do not believe in justice delivery system.
He also said that even during the time of the British, there were certain laws that were deriving the people of their basic rights and privileges, referring to one of the acts that came into force during the British.
CJ Chouhan also stated that though there was huge backlog owing to which the people were not hopeful that their cases would be sorted out soon. Yet, the 'only best thing' was that the people still have the faith in India as they come to court and register their cases.
One of the reasons of this huge backlog of work was the shortage of judges. There were as many as 16 numbers of vacancies of district judges, yet only 5 candidates found eligible. Besides, criminal cases were increasing in comparison to civil disputes.
So, mediation was one of the instruments to dispose the pending cases and mediation was not new in India, added CJ Chouhan. In America and Europe also, the people solve the civil cases through 'mediation' and criminal cases through 'plea bargain'.
Mediation was an intervention by an individual to sole the cases and lawyers were the best persons to be mediators but they should have high morals and dignity, to deal with such cases of mediation, stated CJ Chouhan.
Justice IM Quddesi, Executive Chairman of Orissa State Legal Services Authority, Member Secretary SC Mohanty, RDC (southern division) SB Sahu, District Collector VK Pandian, Ganjam Bar Association Dr SN Rath and judges including BK Patel, BN Mohapatra, Kumari Sanju Panda and RN Biswal also spoke on the topic of the seminar, prior to the starting of a two-day long mega zonal level Lok Adalat here at Berhampur.
