The government will soon bring an amendment in the Negotiable Instruments (NI) Act that will restrict banks from dragging a person to court for an offence like cheque bounce. All such cases, after the changes are affected, will have to be decided only through arbitration, conciliation or settlement by Lok Adalats.
It is estimated that more than 30% of all the pending cases in courts across the country are either related to cheque bounce or traffic challans. The proposed amendment in the NI Act has been recently suggested by an inter-ministerial group (IMG), which was set up last year to make suggestions for necessary policy and legislative changes to deal with a large number of cases pending in various courts.
The law ministry is working closely with the finance ministry and the surface transport ministry to make suitable changes in the law and cases falling under both categories (cheque bounce and traffic challans) will be ineligible to be taken to courts unless some other criminal intent is alleged.
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