After criminal code, govt eyes civil procedure code for a revamp

The Union law ministry may explore amendments to CPC including out-of-court mediation as well as specific timelines to ensure speedy disposal of cases, the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity. The changes may incorporate elements of the Commercial Courts Act, which has reduced pendency significantly.

Queries emailed to the law ministry and its secretary on 3 October remained unanswered.

The Commercial Courts Act, passed in 2015, created a separate dispute resolution procedure. If a suit is filed under this law, parties have to try mandatory mediation which must be completed in three months, extendable by two more months if both agree.

If the dispute is not resolved within this period, they can go to court. Here, the party responding to the lawsuit has to file a statement within 120 days, or forfeit the right to file one. This mechanism has reduced the pendency in commercial lawsuits.

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“Our mandate is to review and repeal all obsolete laws, and the CPC is a 1908 law. It is pretty old. It has been periodically amended; it has been a progressive law,” one of the two officials cited above said, adding the Commercial Courts Act has succeeded because of compressed timelines. “If the same can be achieved for non-commercial disputes, pendency would be reduced. It will still be within the powers of court to decide the speedy disposal of matters. The whole system has to work in sync,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.

India had 5.6 million pending civil lawsuits under CPC and 1.2 million pending enforcement petitions as of 6 October, according to the National Judicial Data Grid.

CPC does need amendments, but not for further tightening timelines, said Sanjay Jain, a former additional solicitor general. “Reduced and strict timelines in commercial matters had its own rationale, embedded in the economic connotation of the matters covered there and takes into account the capacity of the parties to litigate and resultant benefits. Financial capacity of the litigants who contest non-commercial matters in courts is substantially limited, yet the causes they fight for may have highly justifiable societal or human angle, although not quantifiable in money,” said Jain.

Jain argued that tighter deadlines would trigger more appeals, and not reduce pendency. “We need to realize that the defendant is not always crook and a substantial proportion of suits do get dismissed on merits. Genuine defendants need sufficient time to arrange funds and resources to contest suits, which are not always right. Right to defend a suit cannot be made academic by imposing onerous timelines. Therefore, the idea of ​​amending or substituting CPC to further squeeze timelines will not reduce overall pendency of litigation, because the disputes will remain pending in appellate forum,” said Jain, now a senior advocate.

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The Center has overhauled the Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act-replacing them with the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nyay Suraksha Sanhita, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Sanhita. Law and justice minister Arjun Ram Meghwal has previously said that the government’s objective was to shift the focus from penalizing citizens to providing justice.

A key change in the new criminal codes was the addition of time-bound procedures. Under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, which lists the procedure to be followed in criminal cases, judges must deliver verdicts within 30 days from the completion of arguments, with a possible extension of 45 more days for valid reasons.

“The learnings from the Commercial Courts Act, if implemented in CPC for non-commercial suits, would certainly help in streamlining processes and thus reduce timelines. Aspects like having a case management hearing where a schedule is prepared for various stages of the case would go a long distance in achieving this objective. Courts would also be expected to take stricter positions on parties breaching any of the timelines,” said Gyanendra Kumar, partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, a top law firm.

The Center has overhauled the Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act-replacing them with the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nyay Suraksha Sanhita, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Sanhita.

In 2011, the Law Commission had proposed amendments to CPC’s Section 89 which entered the code in 1999. The section allows civil courts powers over out-of-court disputes.

“The Supreme Court observed in Afcons Infrastructure case (2010 8 SCC 24) that there are many drafting errors in Section 89 and amendment suggestions to the Section which may be considered by Law Commission of India,” said retired supreme court judge PV Reddi in the Law Commission report submitted to then law minister Salman Khurshid in December 2011.

The Law Commission report proposed amendments to Section 89 to “remove the deficiencies in Section 89, which is a pivotal provision for facilitating dispute resolution in civil matters and to make it more simple and straightforward,” the report said.

This indicates that out-of-court resolution has featured in CPC earlier as well.

The CPC reforms also come at a time of interest in out-of-court dispute resolution such as arbitration and mediation, thanks to a legislative push. The Center passed the Mediation Act in 2023 and is in the process of notifying the Mediation Council of India. It is also in the process of amending the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, passed in 1996, for the fourth time, and has sought relevant data from all ministries within the government for the same.

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Past amendments to the CPC have provided more liberties to litigants. For instance, the 2002 amendment allowed civil pleadings – the written submissions made by litigants – to be amended at any point during the proceedings, as previous reforms in 1999 were not effective.

The latest amendments in 2023 provided more powers to citizens in consumer court matters, allowing consumer complaints against traders at their place of residence along with allowing any natural person to collect court correspondence on behalf of the litigant, adding efficiency to the proceedings.