Govt to introduce legislations for business-friendly climate

Holding that an effective justice delivery system is an integral part of the economy, Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda today said the government will introduce a slew of legislations to send out a message to the investors that doing business in India is no more difficult.
Gowda said government is bringing a new litigation policy to ensure that departments do not sue each other and cases are settled through arbitration and reconciliation.
Along with the National Litigation Policy, the ministries and departments are being encouraged to amend laws to reduce court cases.
In this direction, the Finance Ministry is likely to amend the Negotiable Instruments Act to reduce burden on courts with regard to litigations related to cheque bounce cases.

The Transport Ministry is also likely to amend the Motor Vehicles Act to reduce litigations related to challans, the Law Minister said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gowda said, is keen that a fresh bill to establish commercial benches in High Courts is brought to Parliament at the earliest. He said the issue has been discussed and the Law Ministry is working on the bill based on the recommendations of the Law Commission.

He said the Arbitration Act is also being amended to put timelines on arbitration wards and a cap on fee to ensure that high value commercial disputes do not linger on for years.

"All this is part of the government's initiative on ease of doing business in India," he said.
The Law Minister was addressing a conference on the role of judicial reforms in economy organised by a business body.
Speaking on the occasion, Justice (retd) Mukul Mudgal said there was a need to improve the judge to population ratio in the country. "But that alone is not sufficient. The judges will have to dispose of cases at a faster pace," he said.
He said while it is a difficult process to train judges in fields like IPR and maritime disputes, it is imperative to have special benches to deal with such specialised fields.

He was of the view that judges should fix number of hours a court would devote to a commercial disputes. Instead of long arguments, they should ask the counsels to present written submission.
Referring to criminal justice system, Justice Mudgal said poor people should be exempted from giving bail bonds as they often fail to come out of jail as they fail to furnish bonds. A judgement by late Justice Krishna Iyer is not being implemented in this regard, he lamented.