Despite repeated instructions from the State Law Department to all the Government Departments etc, majority of them are found to be not responding to the directives of the High Court in the Public Interest Litigations. Like this, the defaulting Departments willy-nilly are facilitating the intent of the litigation to be rendered ineffective. Filing compliance report, timely reply and status report as the cases warrant are attended to in casual manner in most of the cases by the defaulting Departments and the Law Officers about which the State High Court has been conveying serious concern from time to time. We may not go to the extreme juxtaposition of describing such casual approach to Court’s directives as constituting act of contempt but would surely call such approach as unwarranted.
It is pertinent to note that while dealing with several PILs, the High Court had remarked that the Law Officers should act as officers of the court and render all sorts of help in deciding the matters timely by obtaining requisite information from the concerned Departments instead of creating obstacles by seeking grant of more time on every date of hearing. It can, therefore, be inferred that either the attitude or the response shown by the State Law Officers in most of the cases is just to keep matters under perpetual mode of lingering on or the responsibility of ensuring timely disposal of cases was glaringly flouted and compromised. That sounds piquant and prosaic while the State expects the Law Officers to be acting with utmost loyalty to the Government and protecting its interests by cooperating with the Courts in furnishing timely and detailed information instead of passing on the time by seeking more time to come up to the expectations of the courts.
Law Department is reported to have been continuously receiving numerous communications from the office of the Registrar General on the instructions from the High Court for asking Departmental Heads and Law Officers for ensuring proper cooperation in taking PILs to logical conclusions instead of creating circumstances for their status of keeping lingering on. This has reportedly being taken seriously by the present Chief Secretary on whose directions the Law Department passed on cogent directions to all the Administrative Secretaries, Heads of the Departments and Law Officers to ensure proper compliance of court directives and that necessary papers, information and status reports etc were filed timely to avoid any adverse orders .
It has been made clear, vide fresh directives that in the event of any adverse orders of the Court on account of such lapses, the concerned officials shall be identified, responsibility fixed and proper disciplinary action taken against them. We had advised and suggested through these columns, a few weeks back, while commenting upon seeking adjournments without proper justification and keeping litigations against the State in deferment mode because of non seriousness of some Law Officers for their early disposal to be suitably reflected in their annual Performance Reports and appraise and evaluate the levels of their performance by reckoning pendency of PILs, incomplete information and non submission of other relevant material to the Court.
There are many PILs pending disposal as on date, details of which have separately been given by Excelsior recently which are of utmost sensitive nature requiring early disposal which require serious and committed response from the State Law Officers and the Departments concerned which we hope shall seriously be looked into .
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