Permanent Lok Adalats

Your flight from Mumbai is cancelled, the airline offers no refund, and the claim is worth a few thousand rupees. A court case would cost more than the refund. A regular Lok Adalat needs the airline to agree, and it may not. Parliament added a different forum for exactly this kind of dispute: a standing body for public utility services, where one party can start the process and, if conciliation fails, the body itself can decide. That is the Permanent Lok Adalat, and Chapter VIA of the Act creates it.

In two minutes

A Permanent Lok Adalat is a standing forum under ss.22A to 22E for pre-litigation conciliation and, failing that, decision of disputes about public utility services up to a value limit; it is unlike an ordinary Lok Adalat because one party alone can invoke it and it can decide on merits, with a final award treated as a civil court decree.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Practical Training – II: Alternate Dispute Resolution on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.