COVID-19 taught us importance of technology like digitisation, video conferencing: Justice A K Sikri

Former Supreme Court judge, Justice A K Sikri on Friday said that COVID-19 has taught the importance of digitisation, paperless format of courts and videoconferencing and incorporatingthese technologies would help in better court management as well as efficient and cost effective arbitration.

Justice Sikri expressed his view while inaugurating the Indian Dispute Resolution Centre, which according to its website has been set up "toprovide an institutional environment, both online and offline, for resolution of all kinds of disputes".

In his keynote address at the webinar event, Justice Sikri said,"COVID-19 has taught us that this (digitisation) is the future. In future, we need to have two or three dedicated courts which conduct proceedings via videoconferencing only....By incorporating this technology, we can save a lot as there will be better court management and if this is applied to an institution, not only would the conduct of the arbitration be more efficient, it would be cost effective also."
He also said that benefits of ad-hoc arbitration can be achieved by institutional arbitration also, provided that they function in a particular manner, "like having a panel of specialist arbitrators, arbitrators with impeccable integrity and transcribers...which we are lacking in India,"