Concerned over thousands of cases pending in various courts against the State Government, a move is now on to draw up a specific strategy to handle the situation.
Though huge numbers of cases are filed in courts every month, there are little databases of the pending cases in many departments.
Major social sector departments like School & Mass Education, Higher Education, Health & Family Welfare and Women & Child Development are facing large numbers of litigations.
“It is high time these issues were dealt with effectively in a strategic manner,” said a senior officer of the Government, who is facing a large number of contempt cases.
To start with, the Government is making efforts to create a detailed database on all the cases, officials revealed. And the contempt cases should get priority in such a database, said they.
Thousands and thousands of cases are pending at the State Administrative Tribunal, the High Court and the Supreme Court. Hundreds of cases are awaiting implementation and similar numbers of contempt cases are filed because of the failure to implement the orders of the courts.
One of the major concerns is that failure to receive the plaint copies in time, to prepare and file the para-wise comments in time, to receive the directions and orders in time for timely response, resulting in burgeoning litigations.
The Government has initiated a litigation Management System (lMS), which is helping officials. Besides, the new cases against the Government in SAT, High Court and Supreme Court have been catalogued.
From January 1, 2016 users of the lMS are alerted with SMS whenever a plaint copy is received, and the lMS is also provides for tracking the position of the case.
However, senior officials feel that still then, monitoring strategies for the lMS are needed to ensure that all users are regularly logging in and using the facilities provided by the lMS.
The Government is also mulling to ensure an analysis mechanism at every level in the departments for a detailed analysis of the cases once it is received. In a majority of the cases, the courts are issuing direction to consider and dispose of the petitions within a stipulated timeframe.
Inter-departmental coordination is also needed as in several cases more than one department is entangled in a case, said an official.