NEW DELHI: To make India a perfect business destination and attract investment, the government is gearing up to make its judicial system perfect and is training the judicial officers to handle commercial disputes.
The Ministry of Law and Justice has approached the government of Maharashtra to prepare a module and tailor it according to the kind of disputes prevailing in courts. Based on the analysis of the kind of cases filed, a full-fledged training module will be prepared.
The need of such training arose because the old laws have been re-introduced with new amendments but very few judges use the same.
The cases that mostly come before commercial courts include disputes arising out of transactions of merchants, bankers, construction and infrastructure contracts, immovable property used in trade, joint venture agreements, intellectual property rights, to name a few.
“We have zeroed in on Mumbai because it is the centre of all business activity and maximum commercial disputes. So it’s better to analyse the trend of cases there and train judges accordingly,” a law ministry official associated with the project said.
The ministry had already constituted last year a task force to review the present arbitration system and expedite the pending commercial cases in courts across the country. It has also written to the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal, to prepare an updated module for training of judicial officers especially relating to commercial disputes.
According to ministry officials, the training will also have special sessions for judges to have a mechanism in place for pre-trial conferences which is part of the management techniques for commercial courts.
With the enactment of the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of the High Courts Act, 2015, the government is aiming to have better enforcement of contracts, and recovery of monetary compensation, and encourage investment.
The Act will work as a catalyst for achieving the government’s objective in attracting business.
Judges will be trained on...
■ Kinds of commercial disputes
■ New Amendments
■ Pre-trial
hearings
■ Pushing cases for arbitration