'Over 74 lakh cases settled during third National Lok Adalat on Saturday'

New Delhi/jaipur: Rajasthan and Maharashtra became the first states to use end-to-end digital platforms during the third National Lok Adalat of the year on Saturday that saw 74 lakh cases settled across the country including 16.45 lakh pending and 58.33 lakh pre-litigation cases.

Hailing the alternative dispute redressal mechanism, the Chief Justice of India-designate and National Legal Services Authority's executive chairman, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, said that Lok Adalats have bridged the gap between the litigants and the institution.

Lok Adalat not only provides an efficient substitute to seek redressal but significantly helps in reducing the burden of the courts pertaining to backlog and pendency of cases.

"Lok Adalats have acted as a great catalyst for change not just in the legal system but also in the society over the past few years, he said. A press release issued by the NALSA said that the total value of the settlement amount during the third National Lok Adalat is over Rs 5,000 crore. It also witnessed a transition from the conventional method as two states - Maharashtra and Rajasthan- used technological platforms to conduct the Lok Adalat, the NALSA said.

With this major initiative, Digital Lok Adalat has become a reality and another objective of NALSA to implement a cost-effective and time-saving mechanism of dispute resolution for the affected parties is successfully achieved, it added.

The Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority held the first ever full-fledged digital Lok Adalat with 568 benches registering a total of 5,62,295 cases out of which 2,28,863 were cases at the pre-litigation stage and 3,33,432 were pending cases before various courts of the state. With the first-ever full digital Lok Adalat held in Rajasthan, the country's justice system etched a history, said Dinesh Gupta, Member Secretary of RSLSA.

While Maharashtra also observed its first-ever digital Lok Adalat, the cases are restricted to traffic challans, he said in Jaipur.

The State Legal Services Authorities of Rajasthan and Maharashtra in a technology partnership with Jupitice Justice Technologies launched the Digital Lok Adalat in the respective states as part of the third National Lok Adalat of 2022, he said.

In Maharashtra, a total of 63, 99,983 lakh traffic challan cases were registered with the Digital Lok Adalat, he said.

Digital Lok Adalat was launched by Justice UU Lalit on 17 July 2022 during '18th All India Legal Services Authorities Meet'. This was the first time ever that the Lok Adalats were made end-to-end digital.