ABSTRACT
The landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of India in the Raksha Devi v. Parkash Chand case (2025 10 SCC 697) may be viewed as a paradigm shift in the jurisprudence of mediation and alternative forms of conflict resolution. Commencing from a prolonged family property conflict scenario, the case illustrated the futility of conventional adjudicatory conflict resolution approaches that took more than a decade to reach an inconclusive result. Instead of the conventional setup, the judiciary itself selected the experienced and erudite Senior Advocate as a “Court Directed Mediator” and facilitated a new paradigm of swadeshi mediation characterized by empathy and cultural sensitivity to agree upon a mutually acceptable and practical solution. With its backlog of cases running into more than fifty million cases pending before the courts across the country, it can certainly improve its delivery with the help of mediation while humanizing the approach to conflict resolution by transforming the entire justice system into a more ‘participatory’ system that emphasizes fairness, equality, and harmony.
KEY WORDS: Mediation, swadeshi, samjhauta, transition
Introduction
In its landmark judgment declared on the 24th of September, 2025, the Indian Supreme Court struck a commemoration that has evolved as one of the most captivating stories of accomplishment in alternative dispute resolution that have been incorporated in the most recent Indian jurisprudence. The case, ‘Raksha Devi vs. Parkash Chand,’ (2025 10 SCC 697), is a standout example of the effectiveness of mediation that displays the earmark of commitment in attaining excellence in piercing the traditional approach of the resolution model.
Problem Analysis
In Parkash Chand v. Raksha Devi, (2011 SCC OnLine HP 6295), decided by the Himachal Pradesh High Court on May 24, 2011, in an appeal of a judgment passed in 2000 by the District Judge, Hamirpur. Plaintiff, Parkash Chand, who was the maternal grandson of Smt. Ram Dei, claiming 12 kanal, 13 marla land in possession, was suing under a registered Will dated April 12, 1979, executed by his mother’s grandmother, whom he looked after, in his favor. While the defendant, Raksha Devi, who was formerly known as Kaushalya Devi and was the daughter-in-law of Smt. Ram Dei and a joint owner, offered a Will dated May 19, 1979, which was unregistered, in favor of the plaintiff in return for services provided, which was registered on May 19, 1983, after the demise of Ram Devi. The courts, i.e., Trial and First Appellate Court, had rejected/dismised the plaintiff’s suit owing to suspicious circumstances regarding Plaintiff’s Will, and accepting/directly validating the defendant’s, but the High Court accepted and validated the Plaintiff’s previously registered Will on the basis of attesting witness testimony, but invalidated and discredited the Defendant’s on grounds of improper production of secondary evidence, absence of any evidence of loss, and wrong registration after death. Plaintiff’s suit was decreed, and any Appeal allowed. The defendant went into an Appeal to the Supreme court.
The Breakthrough: Court-Directed Mediation
As the case has lingered for more than thirteen years, a definite consequence remains unclear as the conventional process that could have brought closure for the disintegrated family continues to fail despite the setting up of proper and correct channels for the purpose.
In one of the most crucial decisions made during the course of traditional court proceedings that took place on the 23rd of October in the year 2024, it can be seen that the Supreme Court Bench, consisting of Justice P.S. Narasimha and Atul S. Chandurkar, made an important decision. Unlike in the traditional approach, where the mediated discussion would be carried out by the opposing parties, the Supreme Court of India decided to give the post of court-appointed mediator in this case to Senior Advocate Gaurav Agrawal.
The Mediation Process: Beyond Traditional Advocacy
What was different about this particular intervention was “that the mediator was receptive to going beyond the conventional limits of the work of an advocate, and thereby offered a ‘swadeshi mediation’ as the Court described it, with a mix of competence and integrity.” In this particular case, what the Senior Advocate did not do was restrict himself to merely observing, and what he did do was to undertake field visits, visit Hamirpur, talk individually to people of various families, and along with all of them, survey the contested property and honestly talk.
The mediator understood that the property dispute under the claim of family could not be argued through abstract legal posturing. The Advocate did this by physically attending the location and examining the boundaries of the property and involving the disputants accordingly. He further enabled the disputants to place the arguments and disagreements in the context of the actual issue under dispute.
The Result: A Negotiated Settlement
Through persistent hard work and a lot of skill on the mediator’s part, the parties reached a settlement to which both were happy to agree. Indeed, when the mediation report came before the Court, both the appellant and respondent went to a great deal of trouble to express their real gratitude. The appellant confirmed that he had harboured apprehensions as to what the mediator might achieve and that, indeed, he “never expected an advocate to transcend his adversarial role so significantly.” Similarly, the respondent made clear that while resistance to the mediator’s suggestions was at one stage considerable, his client ultimately saw just how fair the mediator’s suggestions actually were.
The Final Decree
The Supreme Court regularized the above agreement on settlement as a judicial decree, which had specific provisions that were concrete in nature, namely:
- The measurement of agricultural land shall be performed by the Patwari in the presence of both parties;
- The respondent shall be given a chance to select 7 Kanals & 10 Marlas from the marked areas;
- Raksha Devi and her sons shall be allocated the residential house and cowshed situated in Abadi Area;
- The family of the appellant shall be allotted commercial shops & underlie areas.
Nevertheless, in addition to the resolution of the dispute itself, the Court laid down another important tenet: that in becoming mediators from advocates, there needs to be a new set of skills based more on listening rather than speaking, harmony rather than conflagration. This landmark decree asserts that the concept of mediation in India need not be taken as a carbon copy from the West but can have its own unique philosophy, namely the improvement of professional proficiency coupled with dedication to the welfare of humanity because it has been dealing with over forty million pending cases in its litigation-starved courts.
The new future: Mediation
For India, struggling with over 50 million backlogged cases in 2024, this is an epoch of revolution. Mediation, once relegated to the fringes of the legal spectrum, has emerged at the very heart of India’s scheme of justice delivery. For the hopes of India, and increasingly of the world, mediation has emerged as the future of dispute resolution not merely an alternative but the very natural evolution of conflict resolution.
The Indian legal system may be seen as having traditionally reflected a basic contradiction: an Anglo-Saxon adversarial system overlaid on a culture deeply rooted in conciliation and consensus-seeking.
Community harmony along with justice, which modern courts cannot achieve, was obtained in the ancient Panchayat system where elders mediated disputes through “Samjhauta” (compromise). Yajnavalkya and Narada Smritis talk about sophisticated peer tribunals that resolved disputes through consensus, not command, a principle diametrically opposite to the zero-some game of litigation. Mediation, then, is not some Western import but a return to India’s authentic legal DNA, blending professional expertise with the indigenous ethos of reconciliation. Recently, CJI Surya Kant said, “Mediation is not a sign of the law’s weakness but its highest evolution.” This cultural renaissance is indeed a confirmation of transition from adjudication to participation.
The calculus for decision-making in conflict resolution has now significantly shifted in mediation’s favor. It is a financially and mentally draining process for the litigants because the case has to undergo an extended litany in the court. Raksha Devi v. Parkash Chand a prime example where lengthy and complex case was settled in a matter of months within the mediation process and the ‘swadeshi mediation,’ or mediation from the perspective of Indians. The actual intervention and engagement in the matter helped in transforming the case from a purely theoretical and legal proposition to a practical solution. The Disha Chemicals case is another example in the same context, in which a complex commercial case was settled amicably in the mediation process after an extended trial in a series of cases.
Conclusion
The future of conflict resolution lies in mediation because it deals with areas that the judicial system cannot address, such as relationship building, proportionality, and participatory justice. With 50,000 visionary mediators expected to be trained in the country, achieving a good success rate, mediation in the near future promises to decongest the judicial system, fast-track the administration of justice, and align the legal system in India more closely to its culture. It is not just an alternative to litigation; it is the future, transforming India’s judicial system from one of judgment to one of resolution, from the temple to the sanctuary.