Bangalore: Law cannot be a static body of rules but must adapt itself to change and changed requirements so as to serve the purpose in a better way, President Pratibha Patil said today.
"There is a constant requirement to maintain a balanced relationship between the legal system, deliverability of justice and social needs," she said while speaking at the first anniversary celebrations of the Bangalore Mediation Centre (BMC), which has witnessed a 54 per cent success in settling cases through mediation.
Currently a combination of factors have resulted in making judicial remedy a time consuming process. "The formal court system is currently overwhelmed," she said. "With backlog of more than 30 million cases, it takes years for a case to be heard and resolved."
Mediation as a dispute settlement mechanism offered a quicker and money saving option to the people, she said.
Apart from helping parties, mediation has a positive impact on judicial system as well. It lifts the burden from courts, the time of the court is expended on matters that truly deserve their attention and over a period of time could result in reducing the backlog or at least prevent further addition to the backlog, she said while espousing the cause of mediation as a route of settling cases.
Mediation being a dispute redressal mechanism based on consensus by parties has begun to prove very effective in many countries and has begun gaining popularity. "Soon mediation will become very much part of a lawyer's work. Lawyers need to examine when to use litigation to resolve disputes and when to resort to mediation," the President said.
