Supreme Court Commences Week-Long Special Lok Adalat For Amicable Settlement Of Cases

The Supreme Court today commenced its week-long Special Lok Adalat to facilitate amicable settlements of suitable pending cases.

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud announced the commencement and requested advocates to ensure that their parties could seek the benefit of the initiation wherever possible.

"From today until Friday, we will be having the Lok Adalat at the Supreme Court. First 7 benches will be taking up the matters for it. Please take advantage of this, if you have any more such matters that can be added to the Lok Adalat, you can mention. We will try to get as many matters settled as possible," CJI told lawyers today morning.

Lok Adalat is an informal way of alternate dispute resolution process, where disputes -which are mostly civil and inter-personal in nature- are sought to be resolved through compromises based on the consent of all parties.

The Special Lok Adalat is being organized in the 75th year of the establishment of the Supreme Court.

The Lok Adalat matters were taken by 7 benches of the Supreme Court from 2 PM onwards today. In the first bench, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, Justice Manoj Misra, SCBA President Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, SCAORA President Vipin Nair handled the Lok Adalat matters.

Last month, CJI DY Chandrachud, in a video message, made an appeal regarding Lok Adalat.

"Lok Adalat represents a very informal, technology-based solution to resolve cases involving our citizens to their satisfaction on a purely voluntary and consensual basis, " CJI said. "Therefore, on behalf of all my colleagues and the staff of the Supreme Court, I would appeal to all citizens who have cases before the Supreme Court or lawyers advocates on record to take the advantage and benefit of this opportunity in an attempt to resolve the cases speedily, in a manner which is acceptable to every contesting party," he said.