Supreme Court judge Justice Aravind Kumar on Sunday said it was time for the State and Central governments to change its approach to litigation, since nearly half of all pending cases in the country involve the government or its agencies.
Hence, he urged employing mediation to settle disputes instead of resorting to litigation.
“Being conscious of the fact that 46.78 percent of the litigation pending in all the forums relates to the State - either the Union government or State governments or statutory bodies, it is high time that we think of settling disputes through mediation,” he said.
Justice Kumar was speaking at the technical session on Mediation in State Litigations during the second day of the National Mediation Conference 2025 in Bhubaneswar.
The judge shared his personal experiences to illustrate how official hesitation and misplaced caution have cost the exchequer dearly. He recalled a land acquisition dispute from his time as Assistant Solicitor General in Karnataka where after nine rounds of talks, a settlement was reached with over 390 landowners.
“I said, by this process, do you know that you will be saving around approximately ₹280 crores to the exchequer? If you don’t settle, additionally you will be paying around ₹400 crores more. That is, in the process, ₹680 crores is lost to the exchequer,” he said.
But the settlement collapsed because one senior bureaucrat refused to sign, fearing vigilance action close to his retirement, Justice Kumar recounted.
“This is the basic mindset in majority of the officials in State litigation,” he remarked.
Justice Kumar also cited a striking example from the COVID-19 period when he examined execution petitions in land acquisition cases. One case had dragged on for 27 years, with the original award enhanced from ₹23,000 to ₹1.85 lakh. By the time execution was filed, the government had already paid ₹72 lakh, yet the matter remained pending.
“When I told the Chief Secretary, this is what we have done and there are so many number of cases pending, he said, ‘Sir, please give me the list. I will see that the amount is deposited.’ … Though it was COVID, the Chief Secretary then was very kind enough and he agreed and they deposited somewhere around ₹56 crores, which disposed of around 7,000 execution petition cases,” said Justice Kumar.
These examples, he stressed, showed how government disputes linger not because they cannot be resolved but because of the reluctance of officials to act decisively.
“This is another type of mindset,” he said.
Justice Kumar argued that mediation could help the government move from being the largest litigant in the country to becoming a leader in resolution. He pointed to the Union government’s development of the Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS), a portal that tracks and monitors pending cases, as a tool that can aid this transition.
“When such data is available, the government can target the biggest contributors and ask, why are we litigating so much in this particular area? Can we not resolve this? My answer is, 'yes, it can be resolved by simple mediation',” he said.
He called upon mediators present at the conference to support this effort and urged governments to actively engage them in resolving disputes.
“Only thing is, the State and its official machinery has to make up its mind to engage these mediators in ensuring that the government disputes also can be resolved,” Justice Kumar said.
The session, which also featured Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal of the Gujarat High Court and judges from the Gauhati, Allahabad, Delhi and Kerala High Courts, as well as senior law officers and mediators, explored themes of dispute management, policy implementation and lessons from global best practices.