COMMITTEE ON CIVIL CASE MANAGEMENT
FORMULA INVITES SUGGESTIONS
The five-Member Committee
appointed by the Supreme Court of India, headed by the Chairman,
Law Commission of India Shri Justice M. Jagannadha Rao, which
was constituted on October 30, 2002, to work out modalities for
implementation and Case Management Formula on Civil Procedure
Code amendments effected in 1999 and 2002, following its judgement
of October 25, 2002 in Salem Advocates Bar Association, Tamil
Nadu Vs. Union of India having upheld the legal and constitutional
validity of these amendments, has invited suggestions from Bar
Council of India and all State Bar Councils and Bar Associations
in the country within four weeks to enable the Committee to submit
a report to the Supreme Court in four months. The Committee has
also sought the views of the judiciary at the level of High Courts
and through High Courts the views of the subordinate judiciary.
The other members
of the Committee are S/Shri Kapil Sibal, Arun Jaitley, C.S. Vaidyanathan
(all three Senior Advocates) and the Chairman, Bar Council of
India Shri D.V. Subba Rao.
The Committee, which
met for the first time on November 7, 2002, also decided to prepare
a Consultation Paper and release it for eliciting public and professional
suggestions before finalizing its views and submitting to the
Supreme Court.
The judgement requires
the Committee to ‘identify any creases that require to be ironed
out’ and for ‘clarifying apprehensions in the minds of the litigating
public or lawyers’ (para 12). The Committee has been asked to
prepare a ‘model case management formula’ as well as ‘rules and
regulations which should be followed while taking recourse to
the Alternative Disputes Resolution (ADR) referred to in Section
89’. ‘The model rules, with or without modification, could be
suitably adopted by the High Courts for giving effect to Section
89 (2) (d) (para 12). The Committee has been asked to go into
the ‘difficulties’ if any, felt and has to make necessary suggestions
(para 24).
