Committee on Commercial Courts Bill seeks more time

NEW DELHI: A bill for ensuring speedy adjudication of big-ticket commercial disputes may have to wait till Parliament’s monsoon session. The parliamentary panel scrutinising the legislation is seeking more time to submit its report.

The Select Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, to which the bill was referred in the winter session following resistance from the Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha, was to finalise its report within six weeks. The panel was to submit the report during the budget session, but said it would need more time as it wanted to seek more views, including those of the Attorney General and the Bar Council of India.

The committee, which met on Thursday, had also circulated the views of Justice V Krishna Iyer, a strong opponent of the legislation.

The Commercial Division of High Courts Bill, 2009, is aimed at adjudication of commercial disputes of Rs five crore or above within a year. Justice Iyer had said the legislation was based on the principle of facilitation in favour of the rich among litigants and discriminated between two classes of litigants “breaching” social and economic clauses. Senior jurist Prashant Bhushan, who had appeared before the Committee, also questioned the constitutional validity of the legislation.

The BJP and Left are expressing similar apprehensions about the bill saying it would create a rich-poor divide in commercial cases leading to a privileged litigant class. Though the bill was cleared in the Lok Sabha amid an uproar, in the Upper House the Opposition insisted that it be referred to a parliamentary committee. The law ministry had brought the bill with an aim at fast-tracking commercial disputes to improve the legal climate in the country for doing business, soon after a World Bank Report ranked India 122, after Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, in a list of 188 on ease of doing business.

The international body placed India on almost the bottom of the ladder on legal environment for doing business.

Based on the recommendations of the 188th Report of the Law Commission, the bill seeks setting up dedicated division benches in every High Court to hear commercial disputes.

The Law Commission had conceded that there is a pressing need to fast-track high value commercial disputes that have arisen post-liberalisation.