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SAARC law meet calls for 'distributive equity'

By Our Staff Correspondent

JAIPUR SEPT. 22. The Jaipur Declaration, released at the end of the ninth international conference of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Law here today, called for ensuring "distributive equity" and social justice in the second and third generation economic reforms launched in the SAARC countries.

The three-day conference on "Law as an instrument of social and economic change" discussed a wide range of issues affecting the people of South Asian. The meet gave a call to use judicial review and judicial activism in the larger public interest and mould the laws to serve the goal of public welfare.

The participants from the seven SAARC countries also agreed that delay in judgments and huge arrears of cases in courts should be eliminated by making full use of the alternative dispute resolution techniques.

A meeting of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Courts of the SAARC nations, which was held concurrently, decided to organise workshops and training programmes for High Court judges to expose them to the emerging trends in socio-legal jurisprudence. The first such colloquium would be organised at the National Judicial Academy in Bhopal in February or March next.

Addressing the valedictory session of the conference, the Chief Justice of India, B.N. Kirpal, said that arbitration, conciliation and mediation could open new avenues for settlement of complex disputes.

Claiming that "the conventional system is incapable of clearing the immense backlog of cases", he urged the legal fraternity to generate "potent ideas" that could be translated into action for systemic changes. The judiciary in the SAARC countries should take full advantage of information technology, which had erased national boundaries, and make good use of the cultural and historical legacies of the region.

The Union Minister of State for Law and Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said that only a sound legal mechanism could ensure the development of South Asian countries. Warning against "blindly" following the Western model based on consumerism, he said globalisation demanded the evolution of a justice delivery system with the stress on speed.

The Chief Justices of Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives also made concluding remarks. The president of SAARCLAW, Dhara Wijayatilake, announced that the next international conference would be held in Bangladesh in 2003.

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