UNREVIEWABLE CONSENT: SECTION 21 OF THE LEGAL SERVICES AUTHORITIES ACT, 1987 AFTER THE MEDIATION ACT, 2023

Two Indian statutes now make a settlement reached without adjudication enforceable as a decree of a civil court. One permits that settlement to be set aside for fraud, corruption or impersonation. The other permits nothing at all. The statute that permits nothing is the one designed for litigants who cannot afford a lawyer.

This article argues that because a Lok Adalat exercises no adjudicatory function, genuine consent is the sole jurisdictional fact upon which its award rests, and that Section 21 of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 renders precisely that fact unreviewable. It argues further that the Mediation Act, 2023, having constructed a graduated protective architecture around consensual settlement, expressly declined in Section 26 to extend any part of it to Lok Adalats. The article proposes a narrow correction drawn from language Parliament has already enacted.