Smarter governance needed to resolve disputes: Top law panel official
A top Law Commission official on Friday underlined the need to go for “smarter governance” using data, technology and institutional coordination to anticipate disputes and resolve them before they harden into litigation.
The official also asserted that what is required now is a shift from “reactive adjudication to anticipatory governance”.
The remarks of Law Commission Member Secretary Anju Rathi Rana came against the backdrop of pending cases across courts crossing the five-crore mark. Her views assume significance as the Government is trying to shed the tag of being the biggest litigant in the country.
“Reforms must focus on smarter governance — using data, technology and institutional coordination — to anticipate disputes and resolve them before they harden into litigation. What is required now is a shift from reactive adjudication to anticipatory governance,” she told PTI.
Rana, a former Union law secretary, said India’s judicial backlog has long ceased to be a problem confined to courtrooms.
“The challenge of pendency in Indian courts has repeatedly drawn attention at the highest levels of governance. It is a challenge with direct consequences for public trust, economic confidence and the everyday lives of citizens,” she noted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she said, has highlighted time and again that delayed justice undermines public trust and imposes tangible economic and social costs, particularly by discouraging investment and burdening citizens with prolonged uncertainty.
Pendency, in that sense, is not just a legal or judicial concern; it is also a structural, administrative and systemic issue, she pointed out.
“In a country as large and diverse as India, litigation remains the default response to a vast range of disputes — service matters, land conflicts, commercial disagreements and regulatory challenges alike,” she said.
The justice ecosystem involves multiple stakeholders — courts, lawyers, investigative agencies and, significantly, the Government itself — the senior Indian Legal Service (ILS) officer said.
“While we see consistent efforts to expand judicial infrastructure, I believe capacity enhancement alone will be insufficient. Several other factors continue to drive this backlog... Data analytics and real-time case-flow management can help identify predictable sources of delay, such as repetitive Government appeals or routine service disputes, before they overwhelm courts,” she said.
Carefully calibrated artificial intelligence tools can help identify patterns of delay, flag procedural bottlenecks, assist courts in prioritising matters and enforce timelines, without compromising judicial independence, Rana suggested.
Technology should function as an enabler, not as a substitute. It should allow judges and administrators to intervene early where delays are predictable and avoidable, she noted.
She said Government litigation remains another structural pressure point. Despite repeated policy interventions, the state continues to be one of the largest litigants in the country.
Strict enforcement of litigation-management frameworks across ministries, encouraging pre-litigation consultation, resolving service-related and pension disputes through early dialogue and restraint in routine appeals, could significantly reduce avoidable cases entering the system, the ILS officer said.
