Centre mulls bill for introducing commercial courts, commercial appellate divisions of High Courts

The Centre is planning to introduce a Bill in the current Parliament Session to set up commercial courts and commercial appellate divisions of the high courts in the country.

The NDA government's move would be to implement the recommendations of Law Commission of India for amendment in the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) for setting up of the courts to ensure expeditious disposal of the civil disputes and effective function of courts so far as commercial cases are concerned.

According to sources from law ministry, "the law secretary has written letters to all the states for their response and the government is planning to introduce the bill in the current Parliament session."

"The BJP-led NDA government is committed to speedy justice system. Since the commercial litigation take years for disposal. The government is seriously considering to implement the top law panel's 253rd report on the issue," the source also told dna.

To work on the lines of United Kingdom and Singapore courts for speedy disposal of commercial disputes in the country, the law commission on January 29 had suggested the Centre to set up commercial courts and commercial appellate divisions of the high courts.

There are more than 32,000 civil suites are pending in the high courts of four metro cities which have original civil jurisdiction. Nearly 75 percent of these cases are more than 2 year-old and about 9000 commercial cases are more than 10-year-old.

The report suggested that Centre should set up commercial divisions(courts) in those states whose high courts- Delhi, Bombay, Culcatta and Madras who exercise original jurisdiction and there should be uniform pecuniary jurisdiction limit of Rs One crore or more.

About other states, the panel said the government should set up the courts in important cities and the judges, who have expertise in commercial disputes, should be appointed for the commercial court by the concerned high court chief justice for a fixed tenure of two years.

Earlier, the Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts and Commercial Courts Bill 2009 was passed by the then government in Lok Sabha but the Select Committee of Rajya Sabha had given some suggestions due to some flaws in the bill. Later, the bill was referred to the Law Commission of India for appropriate recommendations.