Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu felicitated Chief Justice of India Surya Kant at a Symposium on Mediation organized by the AP State Legal Services Authority in Vijayawada on Sunday.
Mediation is increasingly accepted as an effective tool for dispute resolution and will be even more beneficial if the judiciary promotes it on a larger scale, says Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, while stressing the need to build a “culture of mediation”.
Delivering the keynote address at a state-wide symposium on ‘Mediation: Dialogue as a cornerstone of justice’ organized by the AP State Legal Services Authority (APSLSA) here on Sunday, Justice Surya Kant said the process of mediation has statutory support in the Mediation Act, 2023 and resolutions passed by mediators are enforceable decrees.
He said that mediation had emerged as a preferred method of dispute resolution and was no longer an alternative method, noting that mediation would help immensely in reducing the burden on conventional courts. Special courts, such as those dealing with family disputes, have reduced the number of cases to some extent.
Justice Surya Kant further stated that mediation is less expensive and less time consuming compared to arbitration and has become extremely popular abroad. Like the Bench, Bar Associations should also help people to accept mediation as a means of settling their disputes.
The temperament, conduct and integrity of the mediators play a vital role in the results, he said, adding that Lord Krishna was perhaps the first known “codified mediator” who tried to broker a truce between two warring groups whose refusal to bury the hatchet despite His (Lord Krishna’s) intervention led to the Mahabharata war.
He also emphasized that in order to achieve the desired results, it is important for professional mediators to know the nuances of the entire mediation process.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said that in terms of mediation, lessons should be learned from the way the government successfully convinced 29,000 farmers to give 33,000 acres for the development of the capital Amaravati, pointing out that the land pooling was done without much fanfare.
He asked the CJI to consider setting up a National Judicial Academy in Amaravati and offered to provide land in Justice City (which is one of the nine theme cities in Amaravati) for reputed legal institutions to come to the greenfield capital.
Increase in incentives
The Chief Minister announced an increase in the incentive given for successful mediation from ₹3,000 to ₹10,000 and agreed to provide ₹3,000 for unsuccessful cases on the request of AP High Court Chief Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur.
Supreme Court Justices JK Maheswari, PS Narasimha, Prashant Kumar Mishra and SVN Bhatti were among those present.
Published – 1 March 2026 21:11 IST
