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India's first standalone mediation statute — the Mediation Act, 2023 (Act No. 32 of 2023) — received Presidential assent on 14 September 2023. It creates a new enforcement framework for mediated settlement agreements, establishes the Mediation Council of India as a statutory regulator, and provides legislative recognition for pre-litigation mediation. Two years after its partial commencement, however, the Mediation Council of India remains unestablished: a Lok Sabha answer dated 13 February 2026 confirmed that no appointments have been made. This article examines the Act's statutory framework against the pre-existing court-annexed mediation architecture under Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 and the judicial corrections in Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Cherian Varkey Construction Co. (P.) Ltd. (2010) 8 SCC 24. It analyses the Act's key provisions — pre-litigation mediation under Section 5, the enforcement mechanism under Section 27, the narrow challenge grounds under Section 28, confidentiality under Section 22, and online mediation under Section 30. It then examines the governance gap created by the MCI's non-operationalisation and draws the parallel with the Arbitration Council of India's comparable failure under the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2019. Finally, it addresses the international enforcement gap — India's non-ratification of the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (Singapore Convention) — and its consequences for cross-border dispute resolution. The article concludes that the Act has the architecture of a serious legal reform but its effectiveness depends entirely on institutional implementation that has not materialised.