By IANS,
Shimla : The Himachal Pradesh High Court is setting up the state’s first mediation centre here to help litigants to settle their disputes before they get to court.
The centre will be inaugurated by Justice S.B. Sinha of the Supreme Court Saturday. The initiative in this regard has been taken by Himachal Pradesh Chief Justice Jagdish Bhalla.
“This centre will definitely lessen the burden of pending litigation on the courts,” lawyer Vijay Bhardwaj said. Such centres are already functioning in various states including Punjab and Haryana.
As of now, the 10-judge High Court is working overtime to settle the cases, whose numbers registered an astronomical increase after the scrapping up of the Himachal Pradesh Administrative Tribunal.
“In fact, the pendency crossed the 50,000 mark with the transfer of 24,000 pending cases from the administrative tribunal to the high court,” sources in the high court told IANS.