Enforcing Contracts Portal
GS PAPER III: Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development and Employment.
Context: Justice Department launched the “Enforcing Contracts Portal”
Aim: The portal aims to promote ease of doing business and improve ‘Contract Enforcement Regime’ in country.
- The portal is envisioned to be a comprehensive source of information pertaining to the legislative and policy reforms being undertaken on the “Enforcing Contracts” parameters
- The portal to provide easy access to latest information on commercial cases in Dedicated Commercial Courts of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata
- The portal to also provide access to repository of commercial laws for ready reference.
- In order to make access to information on commercial court and related services easy, the portal contains several features such as
- details/links of the Dedicated Commercial Courts in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata ;
- instructive videos related to e-filing, advocate registration;
- manuals on using the Electronic Case Management Tools(ECMTs) like JustIS app for judicial officers and e-Courts services app for use by lawyers (developed by the e-Committee, Supreme Court of India)and
- a repository of all related commercial laws for ready reference.
- The new portal also hosts online reporting by all High Courts regarding the Mediation and Arbitration centres annexed to the Commercial Courts in order to monitor and promote institutional mediation & arbitration by way of Pre-institution Mediation and Settlement(PIMS) of commercial cases.
- PIMS has been introduced with the aim of reducing pendency of cases and to promote mediation as a viable dispute resolution alternative in commercial cases.
Need of this move:
- The Doing Business Report of World Bank Group benchmarks business regulations across 191 economies of the world.
- Within this, the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index is a ranking system which is an indication of an economy’s position relative to that of other economies across 11 areas of business regulation.
- The “Enforcing Contracts” indicator is one such essential area that measures time and cost to resolve a standardized commercial dispute as well as a series of good practices in the judiciary.
- Currently, only the cities of Delhi and Mumbai are under the purview of the Ease of Doing Business survey by World Bank. Kolkata and Bengaluru are likely to be included in the Doing Business Report in future.
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