At a time when the country's courts and justice ministry are battling a backlog of more than 3.2 crore cases, it turns out that the government - both Centre and states - is the biggest single litigant, being a party in a whopping 46% of them.

According to statistics provided by the law and justice ministry, the central government alone is involved in 1,35,060 lawsuits across the country.

Experts say India has far too few courts, judges and prosecutors for its 1.3 billion people. Bulk of the cases is pending in subordinate courts thronged by poor litigants who bear the brunt of the overburdened system.

According to statistics provided by the law and justice ministry, the central government alone is involved in 1,35,060 lawsuits across the country

The ministry of railways is the biggest contributor, being a party in 66,685 pending lawsuits of which 10,464 are more than a decade old.

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).

Listing the Narendra Modi government's achievements in the arena of justice delivery in the last three years, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said a key goal is to reduce government litigation as a result of which the overall case pileup is set to witness a sharp dip.

'A draft national litigation policy is under formulation to make the government a responsible and efficient litigant.

'I wrote to all governmental departments and ministries to take pro-active measures to settle cases were government is a party,' said Prasad.

Ministry sources said to give an impetus to the goal, a nodal officer has been appointed in each department to keep a track of disputes in which the department is involved, avoid filing appeals except in cases that involve a substantial policy matter, and withdrawal of vexatious litigation.

Settlement

The ministry is also making efforts to ensure cases involving two government wings or PSUs are settled out of the court using alternate dispute redress mechanisms.

Pendency in the Supreme Court is now at 60,750 cases. About 40 lakh cases are stuck in high courts. The pendency in district and subordinate courts is at 2.74 crore.

The department of justice's 'Action Plan To Reduce Government Litigation' says, 'Government is regarded to be the biggest contributor to litigation in India. Approximately 46% of the total pending cases in courts pertains to the government.

A view of Supreme Court of India building in New Delhi

This includes cases relating to Public Sector Undertakings and other autonomous bodies. Government litigation includes service matters, disputes with private entities as well as inter-se disputes between two government departments and disputes between two PSUs.'

The Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS) - an endeavour to bring court cases against the government on a single comprehensive online platform - was launched last year.

It was an effort to ensure that various ministries do not adopt conflicting stands on the same issue before a court, a growing trend these days, and to make maximum efforts to settle disputes between governments and among public sector units out of the court, which will reduce the backlog to a large extent.

Transparency Prasad said LIMBS has captured details of more than 1,30,231 cases in which the government is involved.

'It helps to introduce transparency as well as a sense of ownership among various stakeholders/ ministries/departments during the entire cycle of a court case,' he said.

The progress of each case - what happened on a particular date, stand adopted by the government - will be available at the click of a button for the official who has registered himself with the LIMBS.

Several recent chief justices had been asking the Centre to take immediate steps to ensure that only minimal litigation between government departments and PSUs reach the court.

They have also been calling for out-of-court-settlement of disputes to reduce the pileup.