"Enforcing Contracts Portal” Launched to Promote Ease of Doing Business

On 28^th June, 2021 an exclusive “Enforcing Contracts Portal” was inaugurated by Shri Barun Mitra, Secretary (Justice) at the Department of Justice, Delhi in the presence of senior officers of the Department of Justice.

Homepage of the Enforcing Contracts Portal :

The Doing Business Report of World Bank Group benchmarks business regulations across 191 economies of the world. Within this, the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index is a ranking system that is an indication of an economy’s position relative to that of other economies across 11 areas of business regulation. The “Enforcing Contracts” indicator is one such essential area that measures time and cost to resolve a standardized commercial dispute as well as a series of good practices in the judiciary. Currently, only the cities of Delhi and Mumbai are under the purview of the Ease of Doing Business survey by the World Bank. Kolkata and Bengaluru are likely to be included in the Doing Business Report future.

Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, as the nodal department has been monitoring an array of legislative and policy reforms to strengthen the “Enforcing Contracts” regime for Ease of Doing Business in India in coordination with e-Committee, Supreme Court of India and the High Courts of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Karnataka. In close collaboration with all of them, the Department of Justice has been aggressively pursuing various reform measures to create an effective, efficient, transparent and robust ‘Contract Enforcement Regime’.

The portal is envisioned to be a comprehensive source of information pertaining to the legislative and policy reforms being undertaken on the “Enforcing Contracts” parameters. It includes the latest data related to the functioning and disposal of commercial cases in the Dedicated Commercial Courts of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata. These Dedicated Commercial Courts have been established for the speedy resolution of commercial disputes and boast of dedicated infrastructure and exclusive judicial human power.

In order to make access to information on commercial court and related services easy, the portal contains several features such as details/links of the Dedicated Commercial Courts in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata; instructive videos related to e-filing, advocate registration; manuals on using the Electronic Case Management Tools(ECMTs) like Justis app for judicial officers and e-Courts services app for use by lawyers (developed by the e-Committee, Supreme Court of India)and a repository of all related commercial laws for ready reference.

The new portal also hosts online reporting by all High Courts regarding the Mediation and Arbitration centres annexed to the Commercial Courts in order to monitor and promote institutional mediation & arbitration by way of Pre-institution Mediation and Settlement(PIMS) of commercial cases. PIMS has been introduced with the aim of reducing the pendency of cases and promoting mediation as a viable dispute resolution alternative in commercial cases.

The Enforcing Contracts portal direct URL link : https://doj.gov.in/eodb/