New Delhi: With the National Litigation Policy in a limbo for years, the government remains the biggest contributor to litigation in India despite Narendra Modi-led government’s resolve to bring down such cases.
The latest statistics reveal that at least 2000 new cases, instituted by the Central government and its various departments, add up every week to docket of courts across the country.
The information furnished by the Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS) states that 133,059 government cases were pending as on June 8.
This number shot up to 135,060 as on June 12, even though a meeting was convened in the preceding week by the Law Ministry to nudge the departments for reducing the litigation. In a week hence, another 3000-odd cases have piled up, taking the tally to 138,344.
The detailed report compiled by the ministry as on June 12 acknowledges that the Central government, its ministries and departments continue to be the biggest contributors to cases.
Approximately 46 per cent of the total pending cases in courts pertain to the government, revels the report.
Such litigation includes cases relating to Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and other autonomous bodies, service matters, disputes with private entities as well as disputes between two government departments and two PSUs.
Of the total pending cases, Railways alone constitutes almost 50 per cent of government litigation. It is a party in 66,685 pending cases, of which more than 10,000 cases are more than a decade old. Ministry of Urban Development and ministry of textiles have 220 cases each pending for more than 10 years.
Five other ministries with the most number of cases are Finance (15,651), Communications (12,642), Home Affairs (11,668), Defence (3,433) and Health & Family Welfare (3,275).
There are another 369 contempt cases pending against the government, and Railways alone is a party in 241 such cases.
Ministry of Panchayati Raj with three pending cases has the least number of pending cases.
The Law Ministry has designated a joint secretary-level officer in all government departments to monitor disputes in which the department is involved, and to make sure there are no unnecessary or vexatious litigation.
Government-related litigation is among the most serious challenges the Modi government faces in overhauling bureaucratic functioning. Ever since the NDA came to power in May 2014, PMO and law ministry have kept sending communications to government departments to shed the tag of being the biggest litigant.
Last year, Prime Minister Modi had termed government as the “biggest litigant”, and said there is a need to lessen the load on the judiciary which spends its maximum time in tackling cases where the government is a party.
Again, in January this year, the Prime Minister stated that it was not a healthy situation when “two departments of the same government confront each other in court to settle disputes by paying money to lawyers”.
But there seems to be no respite from the ever mounting government litigation while the National Litigation Policy, which seeks to provide solutions to the issues raised by Modi by putting in place a multi-pronged strategy, appears to have been lost in oblivion.
It was in 2014 when the Modi government, which stated that reducing government litigation was its one of the priorities, decided to revise the Policy framed initially by the Manmohan Singh government in 2010.
In June 2015, the Policy was cleared by the committee of secretaries and was subsequently sent to a high-powered panel of ministers comprising home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley, transport minister Nitin Gadkari, the then telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and the then law minister D V Sadananda Gowda.
Two months later, Gowda had stated that the Centre has proposed that the National Litigation Policy would be ready in a month and it would assist in out of court settlement of cases between government departments. Gowda was subsequently replaced by Prasad as the Law Minister.
But 21 months have passed and Prasad or PMO are yet to unveil the final draft of the Policy or give a timeline of its implementation. Even the latest report by the Law Ministry states vaguely that the National Litigation Policy is “expected shortly”.
While the Central government has so far failed to convert its resolve into meaningful action, several states have gone ahead with their respective policies based on the 2010 draft of the Law Ministry.
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