At the beginning of the 1980s, India introduced the Lok Adalat (People’s Court) system. It was intended as a vehicle for settling disputes at the grassroots level in a traditional manner. But does Lok Adalat deserve the support it enjoys amongst politicians and judges in India? This study by the London School of Economics examines several different types of Lok Adalats. It concludes that the claim that this forum offers participants speedy, fair, deliberative justice needs serious reconsideration.
India is acclaimed for achieving a flourishing constitutional order. However, there is broad agreement that further reforms are required to enable ordinary people to access justice and invoke the protection of the law. The Lok Adalat was created to improve access to justice and alleviate the institutional burden of millions of petty cases clogging the regular courts. In 2002 Parliament enacted a new set of amendments to the Indian Civil Procedure Code, which allowed ordinary courts to refer cases to Lok Adalats. In most cases the claims are usually for small amounts of money and involve relatively minor issues. The presiding judge of a Lok Adalat is an experienced adjudicator with legal acumen and a documented record of public service.
It is argued that regardless of how gruff and perfunctory the justice dispensed, Lok Adalats improve the overall legal system.
- The most important aspect of the Lok Adalat is that it offers the aggrieved claimant, whose case would otherwise sit in the regular courts for decades, the possibility of immediate compensation.
- An ordinary court has the power to steer cases into Lok Adalats if the judge believes that a settlement between the disputing parties is possible, even if the parties do not share this opinion or consent to the transfer.
- Some Lok Adalats are authorized to go beyond arranging settlements to decide a dispute on merit and are given broad discretion to arrange settlements according to general notions of justice.
- Lok Adalat judges possess power that can seem overbearing and coercive to the parties before them—especially poor and un-represented parties.
- The scope and powers of Lok Adalats and their relation to other legal institutions remains fluid and unresolved.
It is not clear that Lok Adalats are better for the entire legal system than nothing at all.
- Lok Adalats consume scarce resources. These resources might be better employed to address the fundamental problems facing the ordinary courts in India.
- Lok Adalats create pessimism about the possibility for court reform that truly enhances access to justice.
- The absence of appeals, the exclusion of lawyers, and the shift from “legal principles” to “principles of justice” suggest an enlargement of the judge’s discretion and an assertion that the poor have more to gain from paternalism than from juristic legality.
- The further development of the Lok Adalat institution should rely on empirical observation and analysis.
