PMO asks ministries, depts to give report on litigations

New Delhi: The Prime Minister’s Office is going all out to reduce litigation among it’s departments, ministries and other entities.

The PMO has directed all departments, ministries and government undertakings to furnish details of cases involving each other along with an action taken report on their attempts at reducing litigation.

Sources stated that unnecessary litigations were costing the country’s economy dearly and attempts at its reduction was part of government’s policy to reduce court cases.  

The directive asks the departments and other government entities as to “what action has been taken for reduction of court cases” and asked their comments on “how to reduce the number of legal cases”.

The departmental heads have also been asked to furnish details and action taken reports on the number of pending court cases, what is the startegy adopted for reducing pending court case and action taken  in this regard. Sources stated that a review meeting on the issue is expected to take place at the end of this month.    

According to the law ministry statistics, the Union government is a party to 46 per cent of cases pending in courts and is hence one of the biggest litigants, a tag it wants to shed. Over 3.14 crore cases are pending in courts across India.

The government has been aiming that departments should try to settle service-related issues in house and should avoid situations where aggrieved employees approach court for redressal. While such issues give government a bad name, they also increase pendency of cases in courts, it was felt.

The Narendra Modi Cabinet had recently, in a bid to reduce court litigations on commercial disputes between government enterprises, approved introduction of a two-tier mechanism for resolution of such disputes.

The new mechanism will promote equity through mutual/collective efforts to resolve commercial disputes, thereby reducing court litigations on commercial disputes and avoid waste of public money.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier pointed out that “the government must cease to be a compulsive litigant. The judiciary has to spend its maximum time in tackling cases where the government is a party, and the burden on the judiciary can only be reduced if the cases are filed after taking a careful and considered view”.