NEW DELHI: The Law Commission’s 30-year-old report on the need to curb the bureaucratic tendency to indulge in mindless litigation and the Centre’s repeated requests to chief ministers to stop filing unnecessary appeals in higher courts appear to have fallen on deaf ears with governments hogging the lion’s share of over 44 lakh cases pending in the Supreme Court and high courts.

An SC bench of Justices Sanjay K Kaul and K M Joseph berated the Odisha government on Monday for filing an appeal after a delay of more than 400 days and that too against the concurrent ‘not guilty’ finding with regard to an engineer returned by a departmental inquiry committee, the administrative tribunal and the HC.

The state law department had opined against filing an appeal in the HC, and later in the SC, and advised accepting the tribunal’s decision but the Odisha government nevertheless went ahead. Interestingly, the water resources department accepted the tribunal’s order on the law department’s advice and dropped disciplinary proceedings against the engineer, P K Swain .

When the appeal against the HC order upholding the tribunal’s decision came up for hearing in the SC, the bench said, “It does appear to us that these are cases only brought to this court to obtain a ‘certificate of dismissal’.” The bench dismissed the appeal. This one line conveyed how bureaucratic vindictiveness is putting paid to efforts to reduce mindless litigation at the cost of the exchequer.

The Law Commission, in its 126th report on May 12, 1988, had said, “Multiplicity of litigation is not a matter of concern merely for judiciary and executive. That would be a narrow view of the matter. It is the concern of the judiciary because its dockets have become unmanageable. It is equally the concern of the executive because wasteful expenditure and avoidable misuse of time of officers coupled with the tendency to avoid taking decisions deserves to be curbed. But the third limb of the constitutional democracy, namely legislature, must have equal say in this matter.”

It had further said, “Parliamentary committee can every year seek detailed information on expenses incurred on litigation by government, public sector undertakings and departments and instrumentalities of the government, and take upon itself the inquisition of any particular litigation which was avoidable and yet resorted to. It can inquire whether appeals are merely being preferred for extraneous and irrelevant considerations.”

In October 2016, the PM had said, “The judiciary spends its maximum time on us... the government (because of litigation).” In April 2017, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had written to all Union ministries and chief ministers highlighting the need to address the rising litigation burden on the state. But some state bureaucrats do not pay heed to the advice.

