Courts extremely burdened, mediation necessary: Justice Chandrachud

Supreme Court judge Justice D Y Chandrachud has said that courts in India are "extremely burdened" and "desperately congested", and in view of the alarming rate of high pendency of cases, dispute resolution mechanism like mediation is an important tool.

He was delivering Justice Y V Chandrachud Memorial Lecture here on Friday after inaugurating the Indian Law Society's ILS Centre for Arbitration and Mediation (ILSCA). The Indian Law Society has entered its centenary year.

"We are aware that the courts in India are extremely burdened, desperately congested. Both literally and metaphorically. According to the study done by PRS Legislative Research, the pendency across all the courts grew by 2.8 per cent annually between 2010 and 2020," Justice Chandrachud said.

He added that during the past two years, the pandemic and the tribulations that it brought to the human kind, worsened the already alarming rate of pendency of cases.

The data available indicates that there are more than 4.1 .