Govt to blame for pending cases

One of the reasons for the huge pendency of cases is the love of the government and its instrumentalities for litigation. There’s no denying the fact that the government and public sector undertakings (PSUs) don’t accept a legitimate order passed in favour of an ordinary litigant by a subordinate court without challenging it up to the Supreme Court (SC).

When former SC judge DA Desai became chairman of Law Commission in 1988, he examined the litigation policy of the government and PSUs and found there none. They litigate with the public using public money, he said.

“A type of largesse is distributed in selecting lawyers who receive fat fees,” Desai said, lamenting that there was no attempt to propagate “don’t litigate, if possible arbitrate”.

Law minister Veerappa Moily has announced a litigation policy assuring that public money won’t be wasted on avoidable court actions, but its implementation is not seen.

Last week, SC took Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) to task for using public money for a “frivolous” litigation to deny back wages — Rs1.5 lakh — to a poor employee who had retired some years ago and rightly imposed a cost of Rs1 lakh on BCCL.

Judges GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly said the employee was forced to spend “substantial amount of his hard-earned money on litigation, which he would have otherwise spent on his kids”.
The government and its agencies don’t like to leave proceedings but for political reasons, but they often file pleas which are dismissed at the preliminary stage itself.

In November last year, SC lambasted the government and its undertakings for enriching the coffers at poor litigants’ expense. “The government cannot be expected to act like private litigants and resort to profiteering,” justices RV Raveendran and GS Singhvi said, rejecting an appeal by Urban Improvement Trust, Bikaner.

The authorities must show remorse when there are acts of negligence, the judges said. But no one takes the warning seriously.