Lok Adalats

MADVS2002C04: Law and Development

Lecture Notes
Dr. Anju Helen Bara
Department of Development Studies
Central University of South Bihar
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Key points of Lecture
• This lecture focuses on the following points:
• 1. What is Lok Adalat
• 2. Features of Lok Adalat
• 3. Naya Panchatas
• 4. Early history of Lok Adalats
• 5. National Legal Services Authorities Act
• 6. Criticism of Lok Adalats
• 7. Conclusion
• Note: Various journals, books, articles and websites has been used to prepare
this lecture notes

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Introduction
• Courts in India are beset with massive problems of delay, cost, and
ineffectiveness.
• The Lok Adalat movement is a recent one with the primary objective to give
access to justice to all;
• Just after independence a movement was started to restore indigenous legal
system;
• Gandhians and socialists within the ruling Indian National Congress viewed the
legal system inherited from the British as unsuitable to a reconstructed India, in
which faction and conflict bred by colonial oppression would be replaced by
harmony and conciliation.
• They proposed the restoration of traditional panchayats-a proposal that was
disregarded by many lawyers and judges;
• Though it was placed under Directive Principles;

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• The idea of Lok-Adalat/ People’s Court was mainly advocated by Justice
P.N. Bhagwati, a former Chief Justice of India;
• Lok-Adalat is a non-adversarial system, whereby mock courts (called Lok-
Adalat) are held by the State Authority, District Authority, Supreme Court
Legal Services Committee, High Court Legal Services Committee, or Taluk
Legal Services Committee;
• Lok Adalat have been set up to provide fast, active and cheap remedies
that can be made available to the people along with Traditional Legal
System and to confirm guarantee of equal access to justice;
• The Lok Adalat can deal with all Civil Cases, Matrimonial Disputes, Land
Disputes, Partition/Property Disputes, Labour Disputes etc., and
compoundable criminal Cases;
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• Lok Adalat is a forum where the disputes/cases pending in the court of law
or at prelitigation stage are settled/compromised amicably;
• The Lok Adalat has been given statutory status under the Legal Services
Authorities Act, 1987;
• Under the said Act, the award made by the Lok Adalat is deemed to be the
decree/ verdict of a civil court and is final and binding on all parties and no
appeal lies before any court against its award;
• In Lok Adalat Court fee is not required to be paid and if Court fee is already
paid the amount will be refunded if the dispute is settled at Lok Adalat
according to the rules;
• Lok Adalat system is a boon to the common man as they can get their
disputes settled fast and free of cost amicably;
• Most Lok Adalats take place during the weekends
• The panels are chaired by a High Court or District Court judge from that
jurisdiction;

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Early forms of Lok Adalats: Nyaya Panchayats
• India has a long tradition of resolving disputes through conciliation efforts
outside of the formal legal system;
• From ancient times to the twentieth century, Nyaya Panchayats resolved
disputes through informal tribunals headed by village elders;
• This was advantageous because the elders intimately knew the disputants,
the issues, and the traditions of the village;
• A ruling by an elder was considered well-informed and highly respected
based on the elder’s position within the community’
• As part of the Panchayati Raj, nyaya, panchayats were established with
jurisdiction over specific categories of petty cases

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• Nyaya Panchayats declined as the British system of justice was
established beginning in the mid-1800s;
• However, after India’s independence in 1947, members of the ruling
party, the Indian National Congress, wanted formal courts replaced by
the traditional Nyaya Panchayats, which had been providing justice
for hundreds of years;
• Despite this support, lawyers, judges, and notably the Chair of the
Constitution’s drafting committee strongly opposed institutionalizing
informal court systems;

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• Nyaya Panchayats are different from the traditional system;
• The new Nyaya Panchaytas as envisioned in the Constitutions are
more formal;
• Marc Galanter and Jayanth Krishnan have stated that cases in nyaya
panchayats were declining because nyaya panchayts became more
formal and yet it could not broke the old traditional ties with village
system (Zainulbhai, 2016);

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Early History of Lok Adalats in India
• In India Lok Adalats came up due to the struggle to provide legal aid to
India;
• This movement was taken by legal scholars and judiciary;
• In 1949 the Committee on Legal Aid and Legal Advice in Bombay headed by
Justice Bhagwati, proposed for the establishment of legal aid as a
governmental responsibility and to provide free legal aid as per article 14
of the Indian Constitution.
• The Bhagwati report argued for the protection of the poor people’s interest
and to provide them access to courts through public interest litigation;

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• Upendra Baxi, a legal scholar, did a study of informal dispute resolution in
Rangpur. In this village, the founder of an ashram, Harivalabh Parikh intra-
village disputes through informal hearing and mediation. The duty of the
judge was to bring fair settlement between the two parties (Baxi, 1976);
• Lok Adatas were promoted by government, judiciary and politicians;
• In Lok Adalats all kinds of cases were discussed such as civil matters, minor
criminal cases etc;
• The cases were resolved with speed and ease;

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• In 1987 the government of India passed the National Legal Services
Authorities Act;
• It conferred statutory authority to Lok Adalats;
• It allowed the states to organize Lok Adalats ;
• It gave Lok Adalts the jurisdiction to determine and to arrive at a
compromise or settlement between the parties to a dispute;
• It permitted pending cases in the formal courts to be transferred to
Lok Adalats by direct application of one or both parties;
• The Act made awards given out by Lok Adalats enforceable;

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Criticism of Legislation on Lok Adalats
• Crtitics thought that the Legal Services Act defeated the informal nature of
Lok Adalats;
• Justice Krishna Iyer criticised that legal Services Act made Lok Adalats no
longer focused on social mobilization and speedy justice;
• Lok Adalats face the problem of resources, long pending cases and the
presence of lawyers is inconsistent;

Conclusion
• Over the years many amendments have been made in the legislation and
Lok Adalats have become an indispensable part of the legal system;
• In 2002, there was an amendment to the Legal Services Authority Act that
was set up to resolve disputes concerning public utilities services; Doing
this have saved the delay in the dispensation of justice; Now Lok Adalats
have the authority to make decisions based on the merits;
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References
• Baxi, U, (1976), From Takrar to Karar: The Lok Adalat at Rangpur— A
Preliminary Study, 10, Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, 52.
• Patil, D, (2015), A critical analysis of Lok Adalat in India, Research
Front, Vol. 3, No. 2
• Zainulbhai, T (2016), Justice for All: Improving the Lok Adalat System
in India, Fordham International Law Journal, Vol 35, Issue 1
• Krishnan, J. K, (2015), The significance of judicial power in India in
book Asian Courts in Context, edited by Jiunn-rong Yeh & Wen-Chen
Chang, Cambridge University Press, pg 269-302

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