There will be flood of pending cases post-Covid, mediation needs to be emphasised: CJI Bobde

On Saturday Chief Justice of India SA Bobde said that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the pendency of judiciary cases is increasing. CJI Bobde was speaking at a recent group launch event of a book written by Justice R. Banumathi, a residential Supreme Court judge. The CJI highlighted two issues arising due to the COVID-19 epidemic: pendency of cases and issues of mental matters.

“The COVID epidemic is taking us into a state of great pendency of cases. I don’t think there’s any other way about it, there’s only one way. I think it can only be resolved through arbitration proposals is.”

He said that I am not saying that arbitration can be done in every case, but I do not think that the complexity of cases will be decided in a normal way. For this we have to put all our minds together.

On the subject of mental health, the CJI stated that there was an inconvenient prediction about the epidemic and that they were hoping it would not happen. To deal with the mental health problem, the CJI said that the Supreme Court has taken an initiative to provide support for mental health and the Secretary General will announce soon.

 Since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, physical hearings have been suspended in the courts since the third week of March and the court is hearing cases through video conferencing. Although the court decided to resume limited physical hearings in final settlement cases from September, only a handful of advocates agreed to a physical appearance.

By Priya Kumari