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Don’t make judiciary dysfunctional by sheer volume of cases: SC to govt
According to Legal Information Management Briefing System, there are 6,67,128 cases involving the government pending before the court system
NEW DELHI: The government and its institutions should not make judiciary dysfunctional by their sheer volume of litigation, the Supreme Court observed on Friday while dismissing a petition by government-owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
“The amount of litigation we have to face from the government and its institutions...it’s just a lot. Why should the BSNL come up till the Supreme Court in an arbitral award of ₹9 lakh?” a bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, asked the BSNL lawyer.
The bench, also comprising justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, also pointed out that a single-judge bench as well as a division bench of the Madras high court has already affirmed the arbitral award in favour of the other side -- the RITES Ltd, which is also a public sector undertaking (PSU). The award was with respect to an agreement of consultancy services that BSNL entered into with the RITES.
The lawyer representing BSNL said that the issue is not just about ₹9 lakh but that the central PSU under the Union telecom ministry will have to shell out the money to around 100 such consultants.
“It is actually about ₹9 crore...money is money,” said the lawyer.
“And courts are courts...Why should you make institutions dysfunctional? On every such case, a court will have to spend at least 15-20 minutes at every stage. And you keep filing appeals after appeals. Please, stop filing such petitions,” retorted the CJI, dismissing the BSNL’s petition.
The central government remains the biggest contributor to litigation in the court system. In June 2017, the department of justice of the Government of India, released an ‘Action Plan to reduce Government Litigation’. The action plan took into account that 46% of the total pending cases could be traced to the government.
In 2015, the government started LIMBS (Legal Information Management Briefing System) project that sought to connect 55 ministries and their departments for litigation management. As on date, LIMBS shows that there are 6,67,128 cases involving the government pending before the court system.
According to a statement given by Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal in response to a question raised in Parliament on July 22, the ministries of finance and railways rank at the top among 56 ministries of the central government.
The Department of Legal Affairs, the nodal ministry for litigation on behalf of the central government before the Supreme Court, high courts and other courts including tribunals, further informed Parliament that the total expenditure incurred on conducting these cases was ₹54,35,49,015 in the year 2022-23. The total expenses incurred over the last five years, beginning from 2018, comes to a little over ₹272 crore, the statement said.
