Yesterday, while speaking at the national conference on "Mediation at the Dawn of Golden Age" organised by 'Samadhan' at the Delhi High Court, Supreme Court judge Justice P.S. Narasimha, underlining the importance of mediation in dispute resolution said, 'the amount of litigation in India is unimaginable and it will take a long time to complete the existing pendency'

"Adversarial litigation did not work for us. Because the data and facts speak for itself. The amount of litigation which we have in our country is unimaginable and how long it is going to take to complete the existing pendency...," Justice Narasimha said.

"Mediation is not concerned about truth. It is concerned with a higher principle which is that you need to live in this world so you need to reconcile with each other....

"When you begin to reconcile with each other, you begin to recognise the other person. When you recognise the other person and proceed to reconcile, you are accepting his identity... that is all mediation is," the judge said.

He said mediation is needed in civil courts and lower courts.

"What pandemic has done to us is that the technology which was always available to use, that is, video conferencing, we were forced to use it and now we are used to it. That is one benefit of forcing somebody to do something and get adapted to a method or procedure. This is one thing which the government can consider while considering to make mediation compulsory," he said.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva of the Delhi High Court said efforts to resolve disputes through mediation never go waste and, if they are not successful at once, they can always be successful at a later stage, so one should never give up.