Burgeoning lawsuits against the Government is a sign of bad governance. No Government should be happy with aggrieved people bringing their cases to the doorsteps of law courts when the Government Departments are amply empowered to mitigate the grievances. Largely, if Government functionaries, especially those at higher levels of administrative edifice, strictly observe rules and regulations, there are less chances of people persisting with their complaints and finally heading towards the courts. We should remember that justice is an expensive and time-consuming affair in this country. Nobody would want to waste his time and money knowing that the Governments seldom budge from their standpoint. It means that aggrieved parties expect courts of law to do them justice and not the Government. This situation needs reversal. Good governance should mean that people repose trust in it believing that they are living in a welfare state, which is primarily concerned with the welfare of the people at large.
However, mindful of the ground situation and conscious of the fact that administrative arrangement may intentionally or otherwise, fail to do justice to the supplicants, the Government decided in late 2011 to formulate a State Litigation Policy with the sole objective of considerably bringing down litigations against the State and its various agencies by adopting some specific measures.
The Government decided to appoint a Law Officer to examine each writ petition or civil suit against the Government before contesting the same in the court of law. Law Officer’s appointed would be by strictly following laid down criterion. Among other measures were checking tendency of seeking adjournments by Government lawyers that result in weakening of Government cases; filing of appeals against ex-parte and interim orders only in extreme circumstances; vacation of stay orders and periodic review of pending cases. Moreover, the State Litigation Policy strongly recommends that Government Departments must decide the matters administratively without intervention of court.
The position on the ground is that the previous as well as the ruling Government both expressly said that they are serious about implementing State Litigation Policy to reduce the burden on the courts and at the same time save the Government from recurring embarrassment. The main purpose behind the policy in question was to provide justice to the aggrieved persons without imposing further constraints on them and forcing them to knock at the door of a law court. Why implementation of broad contours of the policy has not taken place remains a mystery. The Law Department was required to appoint District Litigation Officers. It meant that vacancies of 22 officers were available for filling, one in each district. Government’s policy was to promote half of this number through departmental promotion and the remaining half by referring these to the Public Service Commission/Service Selection Board. Consequently, the Law Department filled eleven vacancies by promoting the incumbents in the department but the PSC/SSB did not fill even one of the eleven vacancies despite lapse of four years. Why the PSC/SSB failed to play its role is for the Government to explain. All that one can say is that the Government is not serious in implementing State Litigation Policy. Had it been serious, it would not waste four years.
In one of our previous editorials, we have reflected on the functioning of the State Public Service Commission. This institution remains trivialized first by not appointing its permanent chairperson and second by Government not honouring its recommendations and reformative suggestions in recruitment matters. This has remained a paralysed or handicapped institution. It appears that there is some communication gap between the PSC and the State administration, which is adversely affecting the delivery system. We would advise the administration to undo the communication gap with the PSC and re-establish the authority and legal status of this very important institution. We are not here to sit on judgement on the performance of either PSC or the State administrative machinery. What we want to focus is the inability of the Government to act in a manner that ensures good governance. The people suffer at the end of the day if the administration is faulty or if the PSC is incapable of delivering. Why should people suffer? This is the point we are concerned about. It means waste of public money in long litigations and unnecessary burden on the judiciary when more important and urgent matters are awaiting disposal.
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