Judges need training to refuse adjournment pleas: Venugopal

New Delhi, Oct 20 - Judges need to be trained to dismiss senior lawyers' pleas for adjournment in order to ensure speedy adjudication of criminal and civil cases as well as for faster out-of-court arbitration, noted jurist K.K. Venugopal said here.

Speaking at an international seminar on arbitration in the capital Friday, Venugopal underlined the tardiness of the arbitration process in the country, saying: 'First it takes about five years in reaching a decision over a dispute through an arbitration process.

'And then it's another five years of chasing the case through the three-tier judicial layers of various courts in implementing the decisions arrived at after the arbitration.'

Venugopal's critical appraisal of arbitration law and procedures in India came in the same seminar where Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj expressed a wish to see India emerge as an international arbitration hub.

Bhardwaj said: 'It is my dream that India should emerge as a hub of international arbitration.'

Venugopal said: 'In 1996, when the arbitration law was enacted, with backlog of cases hovering at 36 million in trial courts, four million in various high courts and at 30,000 in the Supreme Court, the law was expected to be a panacea for the huge pendancy of cases in the judiciary.

'But the arbitration process too with all its attendant delays and tardiness has become a clone of the justice delivery system of India.'

Enumerating the steps required for enhancing the efficacy of the arbitration process, Venugopal said: 'To begin with, the judges involved in the arbitration process should be trained (on) how to refuse senior counsels' plea for adjournments on flimsy grounds.

'In fact, if judges learn how to say no to pleas for adjournments, it would be helpful in faster disposal of ordinary court cases as well.'

Pointing out the tendency of retired judges to be over-dependent upon legal procedures in deciding the arbitration cases referred to them, Venugopal said: 'The National Judicial Academy of Bhopal should also train them to be not over-dependent upon the judicial procedure in arbitration matters.'

The jurist said the arbitration law should be amended in such a way that a retired judge, who fails to finalise an arbitration process within one year and seeks to approach the court for extension of his tenure as arbitrator, should be made to tell the court the reasons for his failure, including adjournments, the grounds of adjournment and also the fee that he has received for his service.

Citing another lacuna in the arbitration process, Venugopal said Indian lawyers are accustomed to arbitration only as a part-time profession during the evenings after their engagement with regular courts are over. This tendency must go for India to emerge as a hub of international arbitration, he stressed.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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