The table presented below has been sourced from an official statement made by the Government of India. It was provided by Arjun Ram Meghwal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Law and Justice, in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha6.
It captures nationwide trends in pre-institution mediation under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, since the 2018 amendment. Analysing this data is important because it provides one of the few consolidated, longitudinal snapshots of how PIMS is functioning in practice. By examining trends in filings, non-starter rates, and settlements over time, the data helps move the discussion beyond legislative intent to actual performance. It allows us to identify gaps between design and implementation, assess whether mediation is being meaningfully adopted, and evaluate whether the mechanism is achieving its core objective of reducing litigation and enabling early dispute resolution.
| Period | Applications received for mediation | Applications where mediation remained non-starter | Applications where parties reached settlement |
| July 2018 to March 2019 | 3,680 | 1,660 | 25 |
| 2019-20 | 18,080 | 14,470 | 167 |
| 2020-21 | 18,364 | 14,014 | 186 |
| 2021-22 | 32,335 | 28,441 | 368 |
| 2022-23 | 46,412 | 41,898 | 1,449 |
| 2023-24 | 51,019 | 47,185 | 1,139 |
| 2024-25 | 59,568 | 52,730 | 877 |
| 2025-26 (up to Sept. 25) | 47,218 | 30,353 | 643 |
Source: PIB press release dated January 29, 20267
The rise in filings under PIMS may look encouraging at first. Since 2018, the number of applications has increased almost sixteen times, reaching nearly 60,000 in 2024-25. But this does not necessarily mean that businesses are choosing mediation because they find it useful. In many cases, they are filing only because the law requires them to do so before going to court. The increase in numbers, therefore, shows compulsion more than genuine acceptance of mediation.
A bigger concern is the growing number of non-starter cases.The DSLSA Standard Operating Procedure states that a matter is treated as a “non-starter” where service is not effected, where the defendant refuses to enter the mediation process, or where the defendant denies the plaintiff’s claim8. In 2018-19, about 45% of the cases were non-starters. By 2024-25, this had gone up to nearly 89%. This shows that while more cases are being filed, the system is becoming less effective in practice. Filing may be mandatory, but participation is not.
The settlement numbers make this problem even clearer. The best year was 2022-23, when 1,449 cases were settled through mediation. After that, settlements dropped to 1,139 in 2023-24 and then to 877 in 2024-25, even though the number of filings continued to rise. This means that out of every 100 businesses that enter the PIMS process, about 89 do not even begin mediation, and fewer than 2 end up settling.
Seen this way, the real problem is that the process is not leading to meaningful participation or resolution. For PIMS to work better, the focus should be on encouraging parties to genuinely engage in mediation, improving the quality of mediators, and building trust in mediation as a real way to resolve disputes, rather than just another procedural step before litigation.
