ISDLS - India

1996 – 1997: The Assessment
In 1996, then-Chief Justice of India, Justice A. M. Ahmadi, in 1996, recruited ISDLS to undertake a national assessment of the needs and solutions to the backlog and delay in the Indian courts. Chief Justice Ahmadi’s plan was to study the functioning of the trial courts (High Courts and lower courts) in a diverse group of cities, in order to develop a profile of the causes of the backlog and delay and to generate a solution to the problems. Study groups comprised of High Court judges and advocates were formed in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Maharashtra, and a supervisory study group was formed at the Supreme Court of India in New Delhi.

The Supreme Court study group, which collaborated with ISDLS and reported directly to Chief Justice Ahmadi, was headed by a leading Indian judicial scholar, retired Supreme Court Justice K. N. Saikia. The Supreme Court study group included many of India’s leading judges and advocates: Justice K. Ramaswamy, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Justice R.A. Mehta, Chief Justice, Gujarat High Court; Dipankar P. Gupta, Solicitor General of India; Justice Ramesh C. Mankad, Gujarat High Court; Dr.
Abhishek Singvi, Advocate, Supreme Court of India; and Niranjan Bhatt, Senior Advocate, Ahmedabad.

The national study began in February 1996. ISDLS experts conducted a comprehensive two-week study in the trial courts in each of the aforementioned cities and many of the surrounding areas. The study included consultations and court observations in High and lower courts. The Supreme Court study group then worked for two weeks with ISDLS in the California state and federal trial courts. Specifically, they studied the capability of the California courts to efficiently utilize ADR to remove the large volume of civil cases from the courts’ dockets, allowing the courts to provide speedy and fair justice. They concluded that mediation, early neutral evaluation (ENE), and case management held great potential to reduce backlog and delay in the Indian trial courts.

After extensive preparation, the individual city study groups and ISDLS collaborated to present three-day seminars in each of the aforementioned cities, in September/October 1996. At each seminar, ISDLS and the study groups presented authoritative papers, lectures, and demonstrations of the ADR mechanisms deemed by the Supreme Court study group to be most suitable for the Indian trial courts, including mediation, ENE, and case management. The city seminars were attended by a large and distinguished body of High and lower court justices, judges, and advocates from each city and surrounding areas.

In January 1997, the Supreme Court study group finalized its report. The report asserted that the introduction of ADR would vastly improve the administration of justice in India, and outlined a plan for national ADR implementation. The plan and the authoritative papers developed for the seminars were forwarded to the Law Commissioner of India and comprised the primary reference material for the 1999 Parliamentary law mandating ADR in the trial courts.

1999: New ADR Legislation Passed and Suspended
The 1999 Indian ADR law was placed in suspension from its passing until the summer 2002. This legislation relied on the authoritative papers prepared by the Indian study groups and ISDLS during the assessment study.

2001: Ahmedabad Mediation Center
During the suspension period, ISDLS was invited to develop a mediation capability with the Ahmedabad Bar Association. This collaboration began when Justices R.A. Mehta and M.S. Shah of the Gujarat High Court worked with ISDLS in the California courts in 2000. Soon thereafter, large numbers of leading Ahmedabad advocates conducted additional studies in California. Over two years, the Ahmedabad bar, under the leadership of advocate Niranjan Bhatt (a member of the Indian Supreme Court study group), and ISDLS developed India’s first mediation center, training over 120 advocates in the practice of mediation. The Ahmedabad Mediation Center was a focal point of a September 2001 Supreme Court exchange, during which U.S. Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Breyer consulted on ADR development in India. Since its inception in 2001, the Ahmedabad mediators have mediated and resolved large numbers of privately referred commercial cases. Upon the lifting of the suspension in July 2002, the then-Chief Justice of India, Justice B. N. Kirpal, accompanied by Supreme Court Justices N. Santosh Hegde and Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, formally inaugurated the Ahmedabad Mediation Center.

2002: Law Minister Lifts Suspension of ADR Legislation
In July 2002, the Law Minister lifted the suspension of the ADR legislation, making ADR mandatory in all newly-filed civil disputes.

2002: Conference of Chief Justices
Chief Justice Kirpal invited ISDLS to present a daylong presentation about ADR to the the Chief Justices of each of India’s 22 High Courts and all Justices of the Supreme Court of India. The September 2002 presentation by ISDLS focused entirely on the various ADR models utilized in the California state courts, presented by Chief Judge Wayne Peterson, San Francisco Superior Court.

2002: Indo-U.S. Supreme Court Exchange
In October 2002, a five-judge, five-lawyer Indian Supreme Court delegation was hosted by U.S. Associate Justices O’Connor and Breyer for a legal exchange in Washington, D.C. This exchange provided an opportunity for eminent legal scholars to discuss the merits of ADR. It was immediately followed by a two-day ISDLS-directed study of ADR in the California state and federal courts.

2002: Constitutionality of ADR Legislation Upheld
In November 2002, Chief Justice Kirpal issued the first judicial decision on the constitutionality of the 1999 ADR Act. Chief Justice Kirpal’s opinion ordered that a special committee develop an implementation plan for ADR in the trial courts. The committee, headed by the Law Commissioner Justice Jagannadha Rao, soon forwarded an inquiry to all trial courts, requesting that each present an ADR implementation plan, to be considered in the development of a national plan.

2003: National ADR Conference
The Law Commission committee received one response to this request, authored by Justice M.S. Shah of the Gujarat High Court. The committee determined to conduct a national conference in order to generate greater understanding about ADR and to develop critical commentary about the development of Indian ADR. The conference was co-sponsored by the Law Commission of India and ISDLS in May 2003. The National ADR Conference provided a comprehensive opportunity for the attendees to study the wide range of ADR utilized in the California state and federal courts, as well as the existing ADR models being developed and utilized in India. All Chief Justices of the Indian State courts and many of their colleagues, as well as many of the Bar Presidents and their esteemed colleagues, attended the event at the invitation of the Law Commission of India. The full National ADR Conference Report is available here.

2003: ADR Development in Mumbai
Soon after attending the National ADR Conference, the Bombay High Court Bar elected to begin development of an ad-hoc mediation program. In early October 2003, six senior advocates of the Bombay High Court worked with ISDLS in the California courts to study various ADR models and to design an ad-hoc advocate-mediation program. Immediately upon their return to India, the Bombay Bar began training and implementation of the ad-hoc mediation program, and began mediating cases filed in the Bombay High Court.

Prompted by the program’s initial successes, in mid-November 2004, Justice A.P. Shah and two additional senior justices of Bombay High Court conducted an ADR study with ISDLS in the California courts. Later that month, the Bombay High Court and ISDLS co-sponsored a conference, during which the Bombay High Court and ISDLS study teams presented the ADR program design and their recommendations for future action. The Bombay High Court also announced that the ad-hoc program would be expanded to the Bombay lower court in early 2005.

2005: ISDLS Executive Director Appointed to Indian Supreme Court ADR Committee
In late-April 2005, then-Chief Justice of India, Justice R.C. Lahoti, formed the specialized Supreme Court Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee (MCPC), which would directly oversee national ADR implementation. The MCPC, which continues to oversee the ADR effort, includes Justice R. Pal, Committee Chair, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Justice B.N. Srikrishna, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Justice S.B. Sinha, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Justice Madan B. Lokur, Judge, Delhi High Court; Shri Raju Ramachandran, Advocate before the Supreme Court of India; Dr. Abhishek Singhvi, Advocate before the Supreme Court of India; Shri P.P. Rao, Advocate before the Supreme Court of India; Shri R.F. Nariman, Advocate before the Supreme Court of India; Shri Kamlesh Kumar, Member Secretary, National Legal Services Authority; and Stephen A. Mayo, Executive Director, ISDLS.

In early August 2005, Supreme Court Justice YK Sabharwal resolved all remaining legal challenges to ADR implementation, eliminating all ambiguity in the Parliamentary legislation and delineating a specific plan for implementation of the new law. Immediately thereafter, the MCPC launched its ADR initiative, starting with the Delhi Mediation Project.

2005: Delhi Mediation Project
Under the direction of the Supreme Court of India, nine ISDLS experts implemented a mediation pilot project in the Delhi District Courts in 2005-2006 that proved the acceptability of ADR in the Indian legal community and created a functional ADR model for national replication. ISDLS mediation trainers led American-styled 40-hour mediation training programs for 30 judicial officers who were authorized spend one full day per week mediating cases in modern Mediation Centers built inside the Delhi District Courts. The Delhi Mediation Centers (http://www.delhimediationcentre.gov.in) are now self-sufficient and permanent, and they have settled 3,793 cases as of December 2006 through an average of 135 minutes of mediation spent on each case. The first anniversary event was inaugurated by the Chief Justice of India and attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

2006: Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement
In March 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Commerce requested ISDLS to lead the United States intellectual property rights enforcement reform project in India, starting in Bangalore and Delhi. ISDLS is now collaborating with both Departments to develop a private mechanism for expeditiously resolving civil IP disputes, and modernizing the criminal justice process to enable swift prosecution of IP infringers that will result in deterrent penalties.

2006: Delhi and Bangalore Task Forces to United States
From June 18-30, 2006, a nine-person delegation from Bangalore and Delhi participated in an IPR enforcement study in California and Washington. The nine delegates were hand-selected for their leadership within all sectors of the Indian legal community; they include the senior judicial officers, legal academicians, and IP judges and attorneys. The delegation included Justice Madan B. Lokur, Judge, Delhi High Court; Justice A.K. Sikri, Judge, Delhi High Court; Pravin Anand, Attorney at Law, Anand and Anand Advocates; Chander Lall, Senior Partner, Lall & Sethi Advocates, Delhi; Justice Cyriac Joseph, Chief Justice, High Court of Karnataka; Justice N. Kumar, Judge, High Court of Karnataka: Dr. T. Ramakrishna, Professor of Law and IPR Chair, National Law School of India University, Bangalore; JusticeK.N. Keshavanarayana, District & Sessions Judge, Karnataka; and Justice R.B. Budihal, District & Sessions Judge, Karnataka. Following the June trip, members of the delegation formed the Delhi and Bangalore IPR Task Forces that will undertake the responsibilities of modernizing IPR enforcement procedures in their respective cities and providing models for IPR enforcement throughout India.

2006: IP Seminars in India
From August 23rd-29th, 2006, ISDLS, the USDOJ, and Indian IPR Enforcement Teams, conducted seminars on civil and criminal alternative dispute resolution with a special focus on the resolution of intellectual property rights cases in Delhi and Bangalore. The seminars engaged a wide legal audience in the discussion of IPR protection in India, presented an array of U.S. criminal and civil justice IPR enforcement models for consideration, and introduced the pilot project proposals designed by the Delhi and Bangalore IPR Task Forces.

A distinguished American delegation of federal judges, federal prosecutors and private attorneys presented on U.S. case management procedures, mediation, and plea bargaining, focusing on application of these techniques and procedures in the resolution of IP cases. The U.S. faculty included Hon. Jeremy Fogel, Judge, U.S. District Court (San Jose); Hon. Richard Seeborg, Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court (San Jose); Christopher Sonderby, DOJ IP Law Enforcement Coordinator for Asia and Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand; Christopher Merriam, International Coordinator for IP, Computer Crime & IP Section, DOJ (Washington, D.C.); Neel Chatterjee, Partner, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP (Silicon Valley); Victor Schachter, ISDLS Board of Directors, Partner, Fenwick & West LLP (Mountain View and San Francisco); Stephen A. Mayo, Executive Director, ISDLS (San Francisco). The Delhi IPR Task Force invited a number of presenters from the Delhi judiciary and Bar to relate the Indian perspective on the current state of IPR protection and alternative dispute resolution in India, and included judges of the Delhi High Court and High Court of Karnataka, lawyers of the Delhi Bar Association, and professors and students of the National Law School of India University.

2006: Indo-U.S. Supreme Court Exchange
In October 2006, ISDLS organized its third Indo-U.S. Supreme Court exchange in Washington, D.C. ISDLS Executive Director Stephen A. Mayo was the only non-judicial officer participating in the event. During the exchange, Chief Justice John Roberts chaired a series of seminars designed to compare how the Supreme Courts of India and the United States handle a wide array of legal topics, paying particular attention to how the courts handle case volume. Following the events in Washington, D.C., ISDLS hosted the Indian Supreme Court delegation in California to discuss the future phases of the legal reform implementation effort.

2007: ISDLS Opens Office in Bangalore to Initiate Mediation Project
In January 2007, ISDLS opened an office in Bangalore to implement a Mediation Center in the Bangalore City Civil Court, modeled after the successful implementation project in Delhi (2005-2006). Under the leadership of Chief Justice Cyriac Joseph, ISDLS initiated a court-annexed mediation pilot project at the Bangalore City Civil Court (trial court). In the three months since the program’s inception, ISDLS experts have trained 55 lawyer-neutrals, all of whom have begun mediating cases at the Bangalore Mediation Center. They have successfully negotiated over 200 settlements in recovery, land-lord/tenant, specific performance, partition, and injunction suits. During this time, 16 U.S. legal experts (including federal judges, attorneys, mediation instructors, and court administrators) have worked in Bangalore to oversee the project.