Mediation in India After the Mediation Act 2023: What Changed, What Didn't, and What It Means for Your Dispute

India has approximately 4.87 crore pending cases across its courts as of March 2026.¹ The question of how to reduce this number has been asked consistently for thirty years. The answer has always included some version of “more mediation.” Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure was inserted in 1999 and brought into force in 2002 to mandate that courts refer cases to ADR processes before trial. The Supreme Court in Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Cherian Varkey Construction Co. (P.) Ltd. (2010) 8 SCC 24 spent thirty-six paragraphs correcting the drafting anomalies in that single section and laying out a workable procedure for its implementation. Court-annexed mediation centres were set up across the country under the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee (MCPC) — a Supreme Court body constituted by administrative order, with no statutory basis.

For over two decades, mediation in India operated through this improvised architecture: a badly drafted CPC provision corrected by judicial interpretation, court-annexed centres run by a body that had no statute, settlement agreements whose enforceability depended on how they were recorded by the referring court, and private mediation that had no legal recognition at all. The system worked — imperfectly, unevenly, but well enough in the metropolitan district courts where it had taken root.

The Mediation Act, 2023 (Act No. 32 of 2023) received Presidential assent on 14 September 2023 and was published in the Gazette on 15 September 2023.² It is India’s first standalone mediation statute. Certain sections were brought into force by notification on 9 October 2023.³ What it was supposed to change — and what it has actually changed by early 2026 — is the subject of this article.

The article is written for practitioners: lawyers advising clients on whether to mediate, foreign law firms instructing Indian counsel, and corporate counsel trying to structure dispute resolution clauses for contracts with Indian parties. It proceeds through the statutory framework, the institutional architecture, the enforceability question, the governance gap, the district-versus-High-Court picture, and the international dimension — before offering a practitioner’s assessment of where India’s mediation regime actually stands.

The Architecture Before the Act: Section 89 CPC and What It Could Not Do

Understanding what the 2023 Act changed requires understanding what it replaced — and what was structurally deficient about the pre-Act framework.

Section 89 CPC — the referral mechanism:

Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (inserted by the CPC Amendment Act, 1999, effective 1 July 2002) authorised courts to refer pending suits to ADR processes — arbitration, conciliation, judicial settlement, and mediation — before the commencement of trial. Order 10 Rules 1A to 1C of the CPC provided the procedure. The objective was sound: force courts to pause before trial and ask whether a negotiated settlement was achievable.

The execution was not sound. The Supreme Court in Afcons identified two structural anomalies. The first was that sub-section (1) of Section 89 required the court — before referring the case to any ADR process — to formulate the terms of settlement and give them to the parties for their observations, then reformulate those terms. This is a process that belongs to the final stage of conciliation under Section 73 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 — and it had been imported wholesale into the pre-referral stage of CPC proceedings, making it impossible for any judge to comply literally without conducting mediation herself before referring the case to a mediator. If the court formulated and reformulated the terms of settlement, nothing was left for the mediator to do.

The second anomaly was simpler: Parliament had interchanged the definitions of “mediation” and “judicial settlement” in clauses (c) and (d) of sub-section (2) — apparently a drafting error. As enacted, “judicial settlement” referred to a process conducted by a neutral third party (which is mediation), and “mediation” referred to a compromise effected by the court itself (which is judicial settlement). Courts across the country had been implementing these provisions with the definitions interchanged, correctly — which meant they were not following the statute as written.

Afcons corrected both problems by judicial interpretation, holding that Section 89’s formulation requirement should be read as requiring only a brief summary of the dispute, and that the definitions of “judicial settlement” and “mediation” in sub-section (2) should be interchanged to correct the draftsman’s error. It also established the categories of cases suitable and unsuitable for ADR referral under Section 89, and confirmed that reference to mediation — unlike reference to arbitration or conciliation — does not require the consent of both parties.

The Afcons categorisation matters and is worth stating clearly because it remains the operative framework for Section 89 referrals, even after the 2023 Act.

Cases normally unsuitable for ADR: representative suits under Order 1 Rule 8 involving public interest; election disputes; cases requiring court authority (probate, letters of administration); cases involving serious allegations of fraud, fabrication, forgery, impersonation, or coercion; cases requiring protection of courts for minors or mentally challenged persons; and cases involving criminal prosecution.

Cases normally suitable for ADR: all commercial and contractual disputes; disputes arising from strained relationships including matrimonial causes, maintenance, and custody; partition and family disputes; tortious liability including motor accident claims; and consumer disputes. The list is illustrative, not exhaustive.

What Section 89 could not do:

Section 89 operated only post-institution — once a suit had been filed. It had no mechanism for pre-litigation mediation. A settlement reached through court-referred mediation had to be placed before the referring court and recorded as a decree under Order 23 Rule 3 of the CPC — it had no independent enforceability. Private mediation had no legislative basis. The mediator had no statutory qualifications framework. The confidentiality of mediation communications was protected only contractually, not by statute.

The MCPC architecture:

The Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee was constituted by an administrative order dated 9 April 2005 of the then Chief Justice of India, Justice R.C. Lahoti.⁴ It had no statutory basis. Its first chairman was Justice N. Santosh Hegde. The MCPC ran a pilot project of judicial mediation at Tis Hazari District Courts in Delhi in 2005 — the results led to the establishment of a mediation centre at Karkardooma in 2006 and at Rohini in 2009. Four regional conferences were held in 2008 at Bengaluru, Ranchi, Indore, and Chandigarh. The Chennai Mediation Centre, established in April 2005 within the premises of the Madras High Court, was the first court-annexed mediation centre in India. The Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre followed.

This entire infrastructure — which handles the majority of court-referred mediations in India — was built on administrative orders and court rules, with no statute behind it. The MCPC decided that forty hours of training and ten actual mediations were essential for a mediator. It set policy on case referral, mediator empanelment, reporting, and settlement recording. It was the de facto apex body of Indian mediation with none of the legal authority of one.

When the Mediation Act 2023 was enacted, the MCPC was not dissolved. It continues to function. Its relationship with the new Mediation Council of India (discussed below) is the central governance question the Act leaves unanswered.

What the Mediation Act 2023 Does — The Statutory Framework

The Act has eleven chapters, fifty-nine sections, and ten schedules. It covers the application of the Act, mediation agreements, mediator appointment and conduct, the mediation process, the mediated settlement agreement and its enforcement and challenge, online mediation, the Mediation Council of India, mediation service providers and mediation institutes, and community mediation. The structure is more comprehensive than anything that existed before.

Partial commencement — the critical point:

The notification dated 9 October 2023 (S.O. 4384(E)) brought into force only the following sections: 1, 3, 26, 31–38, 45–47, 50–54, and 56–57.⁵ This means that on 9 October 2023, the definitional framework and the Mediation Council of India provisions came into force — but the operational provisions did not. Section 5 (pre-litigation mediation), Section 18 (time limit), Section 19 (mediated settlement agreement), Section 27 (enforcement), and Section 28 (challenge) were not in the first notification.

As of early 2026, practitioners treat the full Act as operationally available, and the available analyses proceed on this basis. However, the position on whether all key provisions have formally received separate commencement notifications is not entirely clear from official gazette records. Practitioners should verify the current commencement status before relying on any specific section in litigation.

Application (Section 2):

The Act applies where mediation is conducted in India and: all or both parties habitually reside or are incorporated in India; the mediation agreement specifies the Act applies; there is an international mediation (defined below); one party is the Central or a State Government or a government-controlled entity in a commercial dispute; or the Central or State Government notifies the dispute type as appropriate for mediation under the Act.

The territorial limitation is important for the international dimension discussed below: the Act only governs mediations conducted in India. It creates no mechanism for enforcing in India a settlement agreement reached through mediation conducted abroad.

Key definitions (Section 3):

“Mediation” is defined broadly to include any process — whether referred to as mediation, pre-litigation mediation, online mediation, community mediation, conciliation, or any similar expression — by which parties attempt to reach an amicable settlement with the assistance of a mediator who has no authority to impose a settlement. The inclusion of “conciliation” within the definition of mediation is significant: it creates an overlap with Part III of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, which governs conciliation under a separate detailed framework. How this overlap is resolved in practice — particularly for disputes where parties have agreed to conciliation under the A&C Act — remains an open question.

“International mediation” means mediation under the Act relating to a commercial dispute where at least one party is an individual habitually resident outside India, a body corporate with its place of business outside India, an association whose place of business is outside India, or a foreign government. The definition tracks the definition of “international commercial arbitration” in the A&C Act.

“Court-annexed mediation” means mediation conducted at mediation centres established by any court or tribunal — covering the existing MCPC-run centres.

“Mediation service provider” and “mediation institute” are new statutory categories: service providers conduct mediation under recognised institutional frameworks; institutes provide training, education, and certification for mediators.

Pre-litigation mediation (Section 5):

Section 5(1) provides that parties may, before filing any suit or civil or commercial proceedings, voluntarily and with mutual consent take steps to settle their disputes by pre-litigation mediation under the Act — whether or not a mediation agreement exists. This is the voluntary pre-litigation mediation track.

The proviso to Section 5(1) is important: pre-litigation mediation for commercial disputes of Specified Value (as defined in the Commercial Courts Act, 2015) shall be undertaken in accordance with Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act and the rules made thereunder. The commercial pre-institution mediation regime under the 2018 Rules is not replaced — it continues as a parallel (and mandatory) track for commercial disputes above the threshold value.

Section 5 does not create a mandatory pre-litigation mediation obligation for general civil disputes. The Mediation Bill 2021, as introduced, had proposed mandatory pre-litigation mediation for commercial and civil disputes. That proposal was removed before the 2023 Act was passed. The result is that a party to a general civil dispute can still file a suit directly without first attempting mediation.

The power of courts to refer parties to mediation (Section 7):

Section 7 gives courts and tribunals the power to refer parties to undertake mediation at any stage of proceedings — not only at the Section 89 stage after pleadings are complete and before framing issues. Section 7(2) also gives courts the power to pass interim orders to protect the interest of any party while the matter is before a mediator. This is a broader referral power than Section 89 CPC and complements it.

Excluded disputes (Section 6 and First Schedule):

The First Schedule lists disputes not fit for mediation. These include: criminal offences; matters involving rights of third parties not party to the mediation; cases that would affect rights of minors or legally disabled persons (unless a court is a party and consents); land acquisition and compensation matters; proceedings before the Competition Commission, Securities Appellate Tribunal, SEBI, NCLT, NCLAT, Debt Recovery Tribunal, and Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal; election petitions; and matters before consumer commissions under the Consumer Protection Act (subject to specific provisions).

The First Schedule is not exhaustive — the Central Government may by notification amend it. The Afcons excluded categories remain relevant for Section 89 referrals, and there is substantial overlap between the two lists.

Section 6 contains a significant proviso: nothing in the section prevents any court, if it deems appropriate, from referring any dispute relating to compoundable offences — including matrimonial offences which are compoundable — to mediation. However, the outcome of such mediation shall not be deemed to be a judgment or decree of the court and shall be further considered by the court in accordance with the applicable law. This proviso is directly relevant to the Dayawati scenario discussed below.

Mediator conduct (Sections 15–17):

The mediator must assist parties in an independent, neutral, and impartial manner. She is not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure or the Indian Evidence Act. She must protect the voluntariness, confidentiality, and self-determination of the parties. She shall not act as arbitrator or counsel for any party in any proceedings relating to the same dispute. She shall not be presented as a witness in any such proceedings.

The Act requires disclosure of conflict of interest before and during mediation (Section 10). If a party desires to replace the mediator after disclosure — and in institutional mediation this requires an application to the mediation service provider — the mandate terminates and a replacement is appointed within seven days.

Time limit (Section 18):

Mediation must be completed within 120 days from the date fixed for the first appearance of parties before the mediator. This period may be extended by further agreement between parties for not more than sixty days. The outer limit is therefore 180 days. This is a binding statutory constraint — not a target or a guideline. Under the pre-Act framework, court-referred mediations could drag on for months without any effective limit, sometimes becoming — as Afcons noted — “a tool in the hands of an unscrupulous litigant intent upon dragging on the proceedings.”

The 180-day limit applies to mediations conducted under the Act. Community mediation under Chapter X has a different timeline.

The Mediated Settlement Agreement: Enforceability and Challenge

This is the most practically important innovation of the Act for commercial practitioners. Before the Act, the enforceability of a mediated settlement depended entirely on how it was processed — as a consent decree by the referring court, as a settlement deed, or as a contract. None of these routes was entirely satisfactory. The 2023 Act creates a direct enforcement pathway.

Form and authentication (Section 19):

A mediated settlement agreement must be in writing, signed by the parties, and authenticated by the mediator. The terms may extend beyond the disputes referred to mediation — parties can settle other related disputes simultaneously. In institutional mediation, the authenticated agreement is forwarded by the mediator to the mediation service provider with a covering letter, and copies are provided to the parties. In non-institutional mediation, the mediator provides a copy directly to all parties.

The mediator’s authentication is the critical step. It is not a ministerial act — Section 15(3) requires the mediator to protect the voluntariness of the process. While the Act does not state this explicitly, it is implicit that the mediator must satisfy herself that the parties are signing voluntarily before authenticating. This is important for challenge purposes.

Enforcement (Section 27):

A mediated settlement agreement authenticated under Section 19 is final and binding on the parties. Subject to the provisions of Section 28, it shall be enforced in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, in the same manner as if it were a judgment or decree passed by a court.⁶

This is the most significant change from the pre-Act position. Before the Act, a settlement reached in private mediation had no independent legal standing — it was a contract at best, and its enforceability depended on the parties’ ability to establish its terms and obtain a court order. After the Act, the mediated settlement agreement is itself the decree-equivalent. No court recording, no consent decree application, no Order 23 Rule 3 CPC process required.

One practical point worth noting: Section 27’s enforceability mechanism routes through the CPC’s execution provisions — specifically Order 21. This means that a party seeking enforcement will need to file an application for execution before the competent civil court. This is not enforcement by administrative registration or automatic execution — it is execution through court process, which involves cost and delay. One academic has observed that this “brings back the prolonged execution procedures contained in Order 21 of CPC” into the mediation framework — arguably against the spirit of a faster, cheaper alternative to litigation.⁷ The point has merit, and practitioners should account for the execution step in advising clients on mediation timelines.

Challenge (Section 28):

A party may challenge a mediated settlement agreement before the court of competent jurisdiction on the following grounds only: fraud; corruption; impersonation; or that the mediation was conducted in a dispute not fit for mediation under Section 6.

The grounds are deliberately narrow. They mirror — and are at least as narrow as — the grounds for setting aside an arbitral award under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 as amended in 2015. The policy choice is clear: a mediated settlement agreement, reached voluntarily by the parties with the assistance of a neutral mediator, should be almost impossible to undo once made. This serves the parties’ interest in finality and the system’s interest in reducing litigation.

The challenge must be made within ninety days from the date on which the party received the copy of the agreement under Section 19(3). This period may be extended by a further ninety days where the court is satisfied that there was sufficient cause for the delay.⁸

One interpretive question the Act leaves open: does the initiation of challenge proceedings under Section 28 automatically stay enforcement under Section 27? The Act is silent. Under the A&C Act (as amended in 2015), challenge proceedings do not automatically stay enforcement of an arbitral award — the court must be specifically asked to grant a stay. The Mediation Act’s silence on this point suggests the same position applies: enforcement may proceed unless stayed by court order.

Registration (Section 20):

Parties may, at their option, register a mediated settlement agreement with an Authority constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, or any other body notified by the Central Government. Registration must be completed within 180 days from receipt of the authenticated copy, though it may be registered after this period on payment of a fee. Registration creates an electronic depository record and assigns a unique registration number to the agreement.

Registration is not a condition of enforceability. The agreement is enforceable as a decree whether or not it is registered. Registration provides an additional layer of documentary certainty and is particularly useful for agreements affecting property or long-term commercial relationships.

Confidentiality (Section 22):

All participants in mediation — including the mediator, the mediation service provider, the parties, and any advisers or experts — must keep confidential: acknowledgements, opinions, suggestions, promises, proposals, apologies, and admissions made during the mediation; acceptance of or willingness to accept proposals; documents prepared solely for the mediation; and any other mediation communication. No audio or video recording of mediation proceedings may be made.

Section 23 creates an admissibility privilege: no mediator or participant may be compelled to disclose to any court, tribunal, or adjudicatory proceeding any communication that occurred in mediation, or to state the contents of any document or the nature or conduct of parties during mediation. The exceptions are narrow: threats to commit an offence; information relating to domestic violence or child abuse; and statements showing a significant imminent threat to public health or safety.

Before the Act, confidentiality protection existed only contractually — through the terms of the mediation agreement and any institutional rules governing the mediation. Breach of confidentiality is now a statutory wrong, with the admissibility privilege backed by statute rather than contract.

The Mediation Council of India: What Was Created and What Does Not Yet Exist

The Mediation Council of India (MCI) is established under Section 31 as a statutory body corporate with perpetual succession, a common seal, and power to sue and be sued. It is the Act’s most ambitious institutional innovation and, as of early 2026, its most significant implementation failure.

Composition (Section 32):

The MCI consists of: a Chairperson of high standing in the fields of law, mediation, public affairs, or administration; two full-time members with legal, ADR, or similar expertise; ex-officio members (the Secretary to the Government of India in the Department of Legal Affairs and the Secretary to the Government of India in the Department of Expenditure); and one part-time member from industry or commerce to be nominated by the Central Government. The Chairperson has a maximum age of seventy years; other members a maximum of sixty-seven years. Terms are four years, eligible for reappointment once.

Functions (Section 38):

The MCI’s principal functions are: registering mediators and maintaining a register of registered mediators; recognising mediation service providers and mediation institutes; setting qualification and experience criteria for mediators; laying down professional and ethical standards for mediator conduct; setting guidelines for mediation training, education, and certification; promoting domestic and international mediation and conciliation; maintaining an electronic depository of mediated settlement agreements; monitoring the working of mediation service providers and institutes; and publishing an annual report on the state of mediation in India.

The implementation reality:

The MCI provisions (Sections 31–38) were notified into force on 9 October 2023 — the very first notification under the Act. This suggests they were treated as a priority. They were not implemented as a priority.

A Lok Sabha answer dated 13 February 2026 states: “The Chairperson and other Members of the Mediation Council of India are yet to be appointed… the Mediation Council of India is yet to be established.”⁹ This is the position two years and five months after the Act received Presidential assent. Zero appointments. The MCI does not exist as a functioning institution.

The practical consequences are direct. Until the MCI is constituted and issues regulations: mediators cannot be formally registered under the Act; mediation service providers cannot be formally recognised; the electronic depository of settlement agreements does not exist; the qualification and ethical standards for mediators have not been officially set; the training and certification framework the Act contemplates has not been established.

The MCPC continues to run court-annexed mediation centres under the old administrative framework. Mediators continue to be empanelled by those centres under MCPC standards. The distinction between an MCPC-empanelled mediator and a Council-registered mediator is currently notional because the Council does not exist.

The Act is aware of this transitional problem: Section 56 provides that all persons who were mediators immediately before the commencement of the Act shall be continued as such, as if the Act had not been enacted, for a transitional period. This is a sensible provision but it does not accelerate MCI constitution.

The Arbitration Council of India parallel:

The Arbitration Council of India, created by the 2019 amendment to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, was never constituted despite six years. As of March 2026, the ACI does not function as intended.¹⁰ The MCI risks the same pattern — statutory creation followed by indefinite institutional inaction. The pattern is now familiar enough to name: India legislates the institution, does not staff it, and leaves the pre-existing informal architecture to carry the load.

This is not merely an academic observation. A practitioner advising a client on whether to include a mediation clause in a contract needs to know that the Act’s envisaged institutional infrastructure — registered mediators, recognised service providers, electronic depository — does not currently exist in the form the statute contemplates. The practical effect of a mediation clause in a contract that references “a mediator registered with the Mediation Council of India” is currently uncertain, because no such register exists.

Who Governs Mediation in Indian Courts: District Courts, High Courts, and the Institutional Picture

For a foreign law firm instructing Indian counsel on a dispute involving an Indian party, the institutional landscape matters. “Send it to mediation” means different things at different levels of the judicial hierarchy.

The volume is at district level:

Over eighty percent of India’s pending civil litigation sits in district and subordinate courts, not High Courts or the Supreme Court. The court-annexed mediation that affects the largest number of Indian disputes happens at district level — at Tis Hazari in Delhi, at city civil courts in Mumbai and Bengaluru, at district courts in Lucknow, Allahabad, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar, and Surat.

District court mediation operates through court-annexed centres established under the MCPC framework. The referral mechanism is Section 89 CPC read with Order 10, applied through the Afcons procedure. A district judge, after completion of pleadings and before framing issues, considers whether the case is appropriate for ADR. If yes, and if the case falls outside the excluded categories, she refers it to the court’s mediation centre. The mediators are trained lawyers empanelled by that centre. The mediation is time-bound under the Act (180 days). If settlement is reached, the agreement is placed before the referring court under the Afcons framework — though under the 2023 Act, it should now be directly enforceable as a decree without requiring court recording.

The interface between the pre-Act procedure (settlement recorded as court decree under Order 23 Rule 3) and the post-Act procedure (settlement independently enforceable as decree under Section 27 of the Mediation Act) is a live transitional question. Courts are adapting their practice, but uniformity will take time.

High Court mediation:

High Courts have their own mediation programmes, typically run under a mediation committee established by the court. The Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre is the most prominent — it handles referrals from the High Court’s original jurisdiction, appeals from lower courts in which mediation has not been attempted, and cases specifically listed for mediation. The Chennai Mediation Centre (2005) within the Madras High Court premises was the first court-annexed centre in India.

High Court mediation tends to handle larger commercial disputes, matrimonial matters at the appellate stage, property partition cases, and corporate disputes — higher quantum, greater complexity, and often parties with legal representation who understand the mediation process. The volume is lower than district courts but the matters are more consequential.

The commercial pre-institution mediation track:

For commercial disputes above the specified value threshold (currently Rs. 3 lakh in most jurisdictions), the Commercial Courts (Pre-Institution Mediation and Settlement) Rules, 2018 require parties to attempt pre-institution mediation before filing.¹¹ This is a mandatory, not voluntary, track. The 2023 Act does not repeal this obligation — Section 5’s proviso expressly preserves the Commercial Courts Act framework. As of early 2026, there have been approximately 47,218 pre-institution mediation applications filed under this track in 2025–26, according to a Law Ministry Parliamentary answer.¹²

The commercial pre-institution mediation centres established under the 2018 Rules are now also expected to operate within the Mediation Act’s framework — but since the MCI is not constituted, the mediators at these centres are operating under the 2018 Rules’ framework rather than a registered-mediator regime.

The matrimonial dimension — Dayawati and compoundable offences:

Dayawati v. Yogesh Kumar Gosain (2017 Delhi Law Times 117 (DB)) is a Division Bench decision of the Delhi High Court that has been somewhat over-cited as authority for the broad proposition that criminal cases can be mediated. The precise proposition is narrower: the Delhi High Court treated mediated settlement compliance as enforceable through the criminal process route in matters involving the Negotiable Instruments Act (cheque dishonour cases under Section 138 NI Act), which are compoundable offences. The court’s reasoning was that where an offence is compoundable, the parties’ voluntary settlement through mediation should be recognised and the criminal proceedings treated as compounded.

Section 6 of the Mediation Act 2023 expressly addresses this: the First Schedule excludes criminal offences from mediation. However, the proviso to Section 6(1) preserves the court’s discretion to refer disputes relating to compoundable offences — including compoundable matrimonial offences — to mediation. The outcome of such mediation is not deemed a judgment or decree; it is placed before the court for consideration under applicable law.

The practical implication is that matrimonial disputes which have generated criminal proceedings (Section 498A IPC — cruelty; Section 323/324 IPC — hurt; Section 506 IPC — criminal intimidation) can be referred to mediation for the civil dimensions of the dispute — maintenance, custody, property — while the criminal case is treated separately. If the parties settle and the offences are compoundable, the mediated settlement can be placed before the criminal court for the compounding application.

Family courts:

Family courts operate under the Family Courts Act, 1984 and have long had a conciliation function. Afcons specifically noted that for matrimonial and family disputes, the ideal stage for mediation is immediately after service of the respondent and before the respondent files the written statement — earlier than the standard Section 89 stage. Family courts across India now have dedicated counsellors and mediators. Matrimonial mediation — maintenance, custody, property settlement, divorce by mutual consent — is the highest-volume category in Indian court-annexed mediation.

Online mediation (Section 30):

The Act formally recognises online mediation — mediation conducted through digital or electronic means with the written consent of both parties. An agreement reached through online mediation is a mediated settlement agreement within the meaning of Section 19 and is enforceable under Section 27 in the same way as a physical mediation settlement. Online mediation commencement is governed by Section 14(b)(ii) — the date of appointment of a mediator where one party applies to a mediation service provider.

Online mediation was normalised during the COVID-19 period and continued to be used thereafter. The Act’s codification of online mediation removes any doubt about its legal status and brings it within the Act’s confidentiality, enforcement, and challenge framework.

The Singapore Convention and the International Enforcement Gap

For a law firm in Dubai, London, Singapore, or New York advising a client on a dispute with an Indian counterparty, the question is simple: if we mediate and settle, is the settlement enforceable?

The answer depends on where the mediation happens.

The Singapore Convention:

The United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation — the Singapore Convention — was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018 and opened for signature on 7 August 2019 in Singapore.¹³ Its purpose is to do for international mediated settlement agreements what the New York Convention did for international arbitral awards: create a uniform, cross-border enforcement mechanism. A party to a dispute who has a mediated settlement agreement can apply for its enforcement directly in any Singapore Convention signatory state, without the need for separate court proceedings to give it legal effect.

India signed the Singapore Convention on 7 August 2019. India has not ratified it. As of March 2026, India is a signatory but not a party — its signature does not create legally binding obligations.¹⁴

What this means for enforcement:

Section 27 of the Mediation Act 2023 makes mediated settlement agreements enforceable as court decrees — but only for mediations conducted in India under the Act. Section 2 limits the Act’s application to mediations conducted in India. There is no provision in the Act for enforcing a settlement agreement reached through mediation conducted outside India.

If a UK company and an Indian company mediate their dispute at CEDR in London and reach a settlement, that settlement agreement is not directly enforceable in India under the Mediation Act or under the Singapore Convention (India not being a party). To enforce it in India, the parties would need to obtain a court order giving the settlement legal effect — adding procedural cost and delay.

The contrast with arbitration is stark and directly relevant for contract drafting advice. A Singapore-seated arbitral award is directly enforceable in India under Part II of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, because India ratified the New York Convention in 1960 and Singapore is a notified reciprocating country. An Indian court application to enforce a foreign arbitral award is determined on narrow grounds — the Section 48 refusal grounds mirror Article V of the New York Convention. The same institutional convenience does not exist for international mediated settlements.

Practical implications for contract drafting:

For a cross-border commercial contract with an Indian party, the currently rational dispute resolution architecture (as of early 2026) is:

First tier — mediation: a contractual obligation to attempt mediation before commencing arbitration. This is increasingly standard in commercial contracts and creates a negotiated settlement opportunity before the parties commit to the cost and adversarialism of arbitration. If the mediation succeeds and is conducted in India, the settlement agreement is enforceable under the Act. If conducted outside India, the agreement functions as a contract whose breach gives rise to separate enforcement.

Second tier — arbitration: institutional arbitration with an agreed seat. If the parties want an Indian seat, MCIA or DIAC rules; if Singapore, SIAC; if London, LCIA. The arbitral award, wherever the seat, is enforceable under the New York Convention.

The mediation step in this architecture is a cost-saving mechanism and a relationship-preservation tool — not a substitute for the enforceable finality of arbitration.

The ratification question:

India’s non-ratification of the Singapore Convention is a policy choice, not an oversight. The stated reason — implicitly — is that the domestic enforcement infrastructure must first be built: registered mediators, recognised service providers, functional MCI, electronic depository. Only then can India credibly commit to cross-border enforcement obligations that require verifying the authenticity and integrity of settlement agreements produced by its mediation system.

This is the same logic that delayed ACI constitution: the institutional capacity must match the legislative ambition. The problem is that the logic creates a circular dependency — the Convention is not ratified because the MCI is not operational, and the urgency to make the MCI operational is reduced because the Convention is not ratified.

Comparison with Singapore’s framework:

Singapore enacted its Mediation Act in 2017 (Act 1 of 2017), years before the Singapore Convention opened for signature. The Singapore act gave courts the power to record mediated settlements as court orders, making them immediately enforceable. Singapore then enacted the Singapore Convention on Mediation Act (SCMA) to implement the Convention once it signed and ratified. The sequential logic — domestic framework first, international framework second — is the right approach. India has the domestic framework in statute; it has yet to make it function.

What Changed and What Did Not: A Practitioner’s Assessment

Having gone through the Act in detail, the honest assessment for a practitioner advising a client in early 2026 is this:

What genuinely changed:

Settlement agreement enforceability — the most important change. A mediated settlement agreement authenticated under Section 19 and meeting the Act’s formal requirements is enforceable as a court decree under Section 27. This removes the need for court recording under Order 23 Rule 3 CPC, which was the central procedural gap in the pre-Act framework. For a commercial dispute resolved through mediation, parties now have a directly enforceable instrument without requiring court approval.

Statutory recognition of private mediation — before the Act, private mediation existed in a legal grey zone. The Act gives it a statutory home: pre-litigation mediation is legally recognised, the agreement has statutory enforceability, and the confidentiality of communications is protected by statute rather than contract. A party who breaches confidentiality under Section 22 is not merely in breach of contract — she is in breach of a statutory obligation.

Confidentiality codification — Section 22 and Section 23 together create a comprehensive statutory confidentiality and privilege regime. This is important for commercial disputes where parties are concerned about admissions made in settlement negotiations being used against them in subsequent litigation. Before the Act, the protection depended on the terms of the mediation agreement and applicable contract law. Under the Act, the protection is statutory and extends to all participants including advisers, experts, and the mediation service provider.

Time limits — Section 18’s 180-day outer limit is a meaningful structural improvement. Open-ended mediations that extended for months with no prospect of resolution were a well-documented problem in the court-referred mediation system. A statutory limit creates accountability on both mediators and parties, and makes mediation a genuinely time-bound alternative.

Institutional framework in statute — the definition of “mediation service provider” and “mediation institute” as statutory categories, the MCI’s powers and functions, the mediator registration framework: all of these, once the MCI is constituted, will create a regulated mediation ecosystem with enforceable standards. That India now has this framework in statute is an improvement over the pre-Act position where standards were set by administrative bodies with no legislative basis.

What did not change:

Pre-litigation mediation is not mandatory for general civil disputes. The Bill’s original proposal for mandatory pre-litigation mediation across civil and commercial disputes was removed. The commercial pre-institution mediation track under the Commercial Courts Act (mandatory for specified commercial disputes) predates the 2023 Act and continues unchanged. For everything else — matrimonial disputes, property disputes, tortious claims, general commercial disputes below threshold — a party can still file a suit directly.

The MCI does not exist. This is the defining gap. As of 13 February 2026, the Chairperson and Members of the Mediation Council of India are yet to be appointed.⁹ The institutional architecture the Act envisions — registered mediators, recognised service providers, electronic depository, uniform standards — does not exist. The MCPC continues to run the system it has always run, under the administrative authority it has always had.

Section 89 CPC is not repealed. The pre-Act referral mechanism continues. Section 7 of the Mediation Act gives courts a broader referral power, but Section 89 and the Afcons framework remain operative. For district court practitioners in particular, the day-to-day referral practice is largely unchanged — judges continue to use Section 89 CPC, the Afcons categories remain the applicable framework, and the court’s mediation centre continues to function under MCPC authority.

The Singapore Convention gap remains open. International mediated settlement agreements cannot be directly enforced in India. India has not ratified the Convention. For cross-border disputes, arbitration remains the superior enforcement mechanism.

The execution problem persists. Section 27’s enforcement mechanism routes through Order 21 CPC — the execution provisions. While no court recording is required before enforcement, the actual execution of the decree requires court proceedings. This is not as swift as parties negotiating in good faith and the mediated settlement performing itself. It is an improvement over the pre-Act position but not the seamless enforceability that parties in Singapore or the United Kingdom might expect from a statutory mediation regime.

The overall position:

For a domestic commercial dispute between Indian parties, mediation under the Mediation Act 2023 is a meaningfully better option than it was before the Act. The settlement is independently enforceable, the process is time-limited, the confidentiality is statutory, and the challenge grounds are narrow. It is worth including in any dispute resolution clause as a first step before arbitration.

For an international commercial dispute with an Indian party, mediation conducted in India is better than mediation without a statute — but still short of arbitration for cross-border enforceability purposes. Mediation conducted outside India produces a settlement that is not directly enforceable in India. The recommendation remains: build mediation into the contractual escalation process as a pre-arbitration step, and rely on arbitration for the final, enforceable resolution mechanism.

For practitioners advising clients on mediation clauses, the form of clause now matters. A clause that provides for mediation under the Mediation Act 2023, before a mediator from an accredited mediation service provider, at a specified seat in India, with the settlement agreement to be executed under Section 27 of the Act, is a legally coherent and enforceable clause. A clause that provides for mediation “before the Mediation Council of India” is currently inoperative — the Council does not exist.

The Mediation Act 2023 has the architecture of a serious legal reform. Whether it becomes one depends on the Mediation Council of India being constituted, staffed, and functional within the next two years. If it is, India’s mediation framework will look materially different by 2028. If it follows the Arbitration Council of India’s trajectory, the MCPC will continue to run the system from its administrative perch, and the Act will remain excellent law that exists primarily on paper.

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The author is a law student at Law Centre-1, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. Views are personal.

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