Before investing here, China wants to study India’s legal system
NEW DELHI: With China planning to make big investments in India, it wants to study the legal system here and has expressed willingness to sign at least five MoUs with the Indian government.
Chinese justice minister Wu Aiying met law minister Sadananda Gowda on Wednesday and discussed India’s legal system and its alternate dispute resolution mechanism.
The NDA government has agreed to send a team of officials to China for study the Chinese legal system and how to finetune India’s criminal justice system. “China has high disposal rates and India will like to learn from it,” Gowda told TOI.
Beijing is also keen to see how India manages convicted prisoners. But since the issue falls in the domain of the home ministry, the matter is being referred there.
India, on the other hand, wants to have a closer look at the Chinese criminal justice system. Seeking to woo Chinese investment as part of its ‘Make in India’ campaign, the government plans to aggressively encourage Chinese companies to set up their manufacturing units here.
“They have suggested some MoUs… they want to have mutual cooperation on various legal issues,” Gowda said.
One of the areas where the two countries want to interact is alternate dispute resolution system in the two countries. “Settlement of cases at the pre-litigation stage helps in reducing pendency,” he said.
In order to attract maximum foreign investment, the government has amended the Arbitration Act to make it mandatory for a judge presiding over commercial disputes to settle cases within nine months, thereby giving a positive signal to the international business community.
The proposed amendments to the 1996 law are aimed at giving a message that settling commercial disputes in India will no longer be a time-consuming affair.
There are also plans to set up commercial benches in high courts of metro cities to take up high value commercial disputes. Legal aid and administration of lawyers is another area China is keen to study, the minister said.
He said before a final decision is taken on MoUs, New Delhi would like to carry out certain studies on the subjects and may include exchange of legal teams.
