M. L. Mehta

Senior Fellow – India

M.L. Mehta is the founder and chairman of the Delhi Dispute Redressal Society (DDRS), an autonomous registered government society within the Law and Justice Department of the Government of India. Justice Mehta has over four decades of judicial experience and has served as both a high court and district court judge in Delhi.

About M.L. Mehta

M.L. Mehta is the founder and chairman of the Delhi Dispute Redressal Society (DDRS), an autonomous registered government society within the Law and Justice Department of the Government of India.

Justice Mehta has over four decades of judicial experience and has served as both a high court and district court judge in Delhi. He has delivered thousands of judgments, many of which have been landmark pronouncements. In his long and enriching career, he has presided over all jurisdictions ranging from trial/original, appellate, writ, revenue, taxation, criminal, civil, and commercial, among others.

A pioneer in introducing court-connected mediation and community mediation in India, Justice Mehta served as a member of the Delhi High Court Mediation Committee, where he oversaw the launch, establishment, and development of all the Mediation Centres in the Delhi District Courts.

Post his superannuation, Justice Mehta is actively engaged in the practice of arbitration, mediation, and consultancy.

Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation Practice

Justice Mehta has been appointed as an arbitrator by different High Courts and the Supreme Court of India and is one of India’s preeminent arbitrators for complex civil, commercial, multi-party, and high stake cases. He is empaneled on institutions, such as the Indian Council of Arbitrators and the ASSOCHAM International Council of Alternate Dispute Resolution. He has served as an arbitrator in a wide variety of arbitrations involving investments, trade, construction, oil and gas, banking, corporate, distributorship, franchising, licensing, and general commercial matters and has also mediated high stake disputes, including disputes by and against the departments of the government.

Justice Mehta’s stunning fervor for mediation equally encourages and motivates the litigants and the lawyers to settle cases pending in the courts. He has successfully mediated/conciliated more than one thousand cases, including: corporate disputes, commercial conflicts, school education mediation, company disputes, divorce mediation, labor disputes, and community mediation.

ADR Achievements and Training

Justice Mehta pioneered the institutionalization of ADR in Delhi by establishing DDRS as an autonomous registered government body, specializing in pre-litigation community mediation.
As a member of the Mediation Committee of the High Court of Delhi, Justice Mehta supervised all the Mediation Centres in the District Court and pioneered the creation of various mediation centres throughout India, including the Delhi Mediation Centres (DMCs), the Bangalore Mediation Centre (BMC). These centres function to decrease the burden on the courts by providing extensive court-annexed mediation programs.
Justice Mehta was appointed as Chairman of the core group jointly constituted by the High Court of Delhi and the Government of Delhi for structural and infrastructural changes for judicial reforms in the Delhi courts. He also extensively contributed to the preparation of the national training manual of the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee (MCPC) of the Supreme Court of India.
Justice Mehta was awarded the first Weinstein JAMS International Fellowships in 2009 and was awarded the Certificate of Outstanding International Commercial Dispute Resolver
Justice Mehta was among the first judges in India to be trained by a team of mediation trainers from the Institute for the Study and Development of Legal Systems (ISDLS) in California in 2005, while he was serving as a judge in the district courts of Delhi.
He has also undergone further advanced training in mediation from a team of experts from the ISDLS in California and the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) in London.
Justice Mehta was a Visiting Scholar at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School, California in 2009.

ADR Teaching and Mentoring

Justice Mehta developed the Indigenous Module of Mediation Training and imparted training to lawyers and judges as a Master National Trainer in Mediation.
In helping to establish a large number of mediation centres across the country under the aegis of the Supreme Court Committee, he created a team of trainers in mediation and mentored their training programs.
As the founder of DDRS, he supervises Mediator Skills Training Programs and workshops for lawyers and judges organized by his team of field trainers. DDRS regularly conducts mediation awareness training workshops and seminars for the general public and lawyers.

Publications and Education

Publications

As a member of a committee constituted by MCPC of the Supreme Court of India, he contributed to preparing the National Mediation Training Manual.

Justice Mehta co-authored an article on mediation with Janet Martinez and Sheila Purcell titled, “Dispute System Design: A Comparative Study of India, Israel and California” published in the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 14. (2013).

Educational Qualifications

Bachelor in Law from the University of Delhi
Master in Law from University of Kurukshetra
Master degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi