CERTIFIED COPY OF ORDER

1. Certified copy of order, mean, the final order of court, and having the seal
and stamp of court.
2. Certified copy of useful, in case of execution of the order, or in case of
Appeal.
3. Certified copy can be applied by making an application to the Registry of
concerned Court, alongwith nominal fees for the order.
4. In case of "urgent requirement some additional amount has to be deposited.
5. "Urgent order" can be obtained within a week, and the normal might take 15
days.

Appeal, Reference and Review

When an order is passed against a party to the suit, it is not that it has no further
remedy. 
Such party can further initiate the proceedings, by way of:
● Appeal,
● Reference, or
● Review

CHAPTER-(7)
CHALLENGES
 ● Inadequate number of conciliators- In many Courts it has been observed
that they don’t have counsellors or the counsellors are inapt. A major
problem is the counsellors keep changing frequently.
● Attitude of Family Court Judges- The judges appointed to the family court
do not have any special expertise in dealing with family matters, nor do they
have any special expertise in settling disputes through conciliation. The
appointment of women judge in Family Court is still a dream to be achieved.
● Lack of Uniformity in Rules and Procedures- The procedure established
in different High Courts have laid down different rules of procedure. This
causes confusion during the proceedings. There are still many High Courts
who have not yet established Family Courts.
● Permitting Lawyers- Though the act has provided that the proceedings
should be conducted without a legal practitioner, the system did not create
any alternative system of simplified rules. The litigants are at the mercy of
court clerks and peons to advise them on the rules followed.
● Poor state of infrastructure- The Family Court suffers from lack of basic
infrastructure. In maximum Family courts there is absence of drinking water,
canteen, typist, notary.This lack of basic requirements creates hardship. The
working conditions are basically unhygienic and poor.

CHAPTER-(8)
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Conclusion
I would like to conclude this paper with a brief discussion of some broad themes
that the figures signal:

Firstly, the statistics presented in this paper attest to the emergence of “Settlement”
as the predominant mode of disposing cases in the Family Court. What this
indicates is that Family courts are not essentially, but only residually courts of
adjudication. By this I am not referring to the hidden glacier of causes that never
make it to court, but to the fate of the cases that do. ‘Judgment’ is what courts are
compelled to deliver in residual cases when they have been unable to coerce
conciliation upon parties, or where the parties have not been driven away by
process and withdrawn their claims. So a ‘Judgment’ paradoxically seems to be a
symptom of judicial failure, not the very raison d'être for courts’ existence.

As I have mentioned previously, this is unsurprising, even expected, given the

policy thrust of the Family Courts Act. As a proportion of cases that are disposed
after trial, it even accords well with international practices (read USA). Writing
almost 30 years ago, Marc Galanter wrote in the same article: “Bargaining in the
shadow of the law' is the prevalent means of resolving civil cases in American
courts: fewer than ten percent of cases are tried.”1 Galanter describes the shift in
American judiciary’s attitude towards settlement since the 1940s as being
responsive to the spectre of ‘docket explosion’ – echoes of which are familiar to us
in the periodic pronouncements of our own Judges from bench and pulpit.2 Against
popular opinion, however, I would like to state two caveats that would dull the
hurrahs normally due to any evidence of an increasing shift towards mediated
outcomes:

1
Marc Galanter, ‘“A Settlement Judge, Not a Trial Judge: ” Judicial Mediation In the United States
2
http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/adr_conf/Justice_Lahoti_Address.pdf
1) Galanter’s paper discusses evidence from studies that indicated that the
increasing shift towards mediation had no impact, and at times even an inverse
relationship with the number of cases disposed by judges. I.e. if the rationale of
an increasing shift towards mediation is to free up judicial time to adjudicate
more intricate cases, this was not borne out by the actual practices of courts in
the US. Although I have not verified whether this still remains the case 30
years after Galanter’s paper, the statistics about the Mumbai family court seem
to point in this direction as well. The high volume of cases that are disposed by
consent seem to have had no bearing at all on the remainder of cases – chiefly
maintenance petitions which continue to take an average of two years or longer
to dispose. This does not mean that mediation is undesirable, only that a more
systematic stock-taking and budgeting of judicial time is warranted at an
institutional level.
2) Any evaluation of the desirability of increased “court-annexed” mediation must
also factor in the quality of the bargains that litigants enter into under the
court’s shadow. Although I have not yet systematised the data in this regard,
consent terms recorded in the decrees of the court seem to indicate that it is
nearly a template for women to waive all present and future maintenance
claims in return for unhindered custodial access to their children. Against this
context, the increased frequency of cases disposed by ‘consent’ may be read as
an assessment by women that they cannot hope for better justice from the
processes of the court. The insubstantive justice of these “private orderings” by
litigants should be a greater concern of the court than it currently appears to be.
The second point I would like to make in this conclusion is about the role that
gender plays in the Family Court. Access of women to courts generally has been a
concern of the women’s movement both nationally and internationally. While it is
encouraging to note that the Mumbai Family Court seems more accessible to
women generally (although we have no system-wide statistics to form any basis for
comparison), it is worrying that the average disposal times of cases are longer in
the categories of cases litigated by women. It remains the task of future research in
the area to assess the quality of outcomes women receive from the court.

The Family Court, Varanasi was established in 1995. It is presently situated within
the premises of the Office of the District Magistrate’s Court in Katcheri. The
Family Court, Varanasi handles various types of cases like: Dissolution of
Marriage; Restitution of Conjugal Rights; Custody of Children; Property Rights;
Null and Void Marriages; Judicial Separations; and Maintenance.

Only four rooms have been provided to the Court. The office room is extremely
small and is situated in a very old building constructed during the British period in
1889. There is hardly any space for clients to stand and clarify their doubts. The
staircase leading to the office room is very small, steep and narrow. The office is
located in an unhygienic place adjacent to a men’s toilet that stinks and it is very
difficult for clients and visitors to even come near the room. All the rooms are dark
and gloomy without sufficient light and air. They have lowvoltage tungsten bulbs
and fans, which rarely operate due to frequent power cuts. As there is no seating
provision for clients and visitors, the entire corridor and veranda is overcrowded
and congested. Therefore, it is suggested that the State Government of Uttar
Pradesh should take necessary action to shift the premises of the Family Court to a
decent, healthy environment to enable clients, especially women, to approach the
Court easily and use its services to resolve their marital disputes. The separate
Counselling Centre of the Family Court, Varanasi started functioning only from
December 5, 2004. Four parttime Counsellors are appointed to assist the Judge in
counselling the clients to reconcile and settle their disputes. One of these is a male
general physician. Another person is a male retired Professor from the Mahatma
Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith University’s Social Work Department and two others are
women counsellors. As they are part-time counsellors they do not devote their time
fully during the Court working hours. Hence, it is suggested that full-time
counsellors be appointed to devote their time fully in counselling affected couples.

There are several active NGOs who are willing to spare their time to assist the
Family Court in Counselling. It is suggested that the Government of India takes
immediate steps to instruct the State Government to take necessary action to
appoint full-time counsellors to the Family Court, Varanasi and also use the