{"id":32026,"date":"2018-10-29T12:18:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T06:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=32026"},"modified":"2018-10-29T12:18:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T06:48:02","slug":"tackling-government-litigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tackling-government-litigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling government litigation\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/tackling-government-litigation\/article22444640.ece\"><strong>Tackling government litigation<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is trite (lacking originality or freshness) to say that the government is the biggest litigant in India. No less than the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India have acknowledged this in the recent past, goading (provoke or annoy (someone) so as to stimulate an action or reaction.) the other \u2014 the judiciary and the executive, respectively \u2014 to explore ways of addressing this issue<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018Government\u2019 litigation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to the Ministry of Law and Justice, government departments are a party to around \u201c46 percent\u201d of court cases<\/p>\n<p><strong>Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is government?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For a start, it does not tell us what the term \u201cgovernment\u201d means. To a layperson, everything from a local panchayat to the Prime Minister\u2019s Office could be representative of the \u201cgovernment\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>As a State<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In addition, entities such as nationalised banks and universities, which most laypersons may not identify as \u201cgovernment\u2019, are \u201cState\u201d for the purposes of Article 12 of the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One size fits all approach doesn\u2019t work<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thus, any attempt at resolving the issue of \u201cgovernment litigation\u201d must be based on the premise that the government in India functions in so many myriad forms that a one-size-fits-all approach to deal with the issue is impossible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A compulsive litigant<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A misconception regarding government litigation is that the government itself is a source of all cases involving the government<\/li>\n<li>This appears to be the reason why existing policies attempt to address the issue of \u201cgovernment being a compulsive litigant\u201d and do not consider cases where the government is a respondent<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Writ petitions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The writ jurisdiction vested in High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution enables an ordinary citizen to access the highest court in her State to address grievances against any authority, including any government, for violation of any of her fundamental or other rights.<\/p>\n<p><strong>These writ petitions indicate friction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As such, the number and nature of writ petitions filed before a High Court are indicative of the extent of friction between citizens and the government<\/p>\n<p><strong>Possible solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This analysis of petitions filed against the state at various levels of governance shows that a multi-pronged approach needs to be adopted to tackle the issue of \u201cgovernment litigation\u201d, depending on the kind of litigation<\/p>\n<p><strong>Internal dispute resolution mechanisms needed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For example, to reduce writ petitions filed under service and labour classifications, the state must put in place robust internal dispute resolution mechanisms within each department which inspire confidence in its workers as a means of addressing their grievances against the management<\/p>\n<p><strong>Quasi judicial authorities need to be better trained<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To reduce the incidence of such writ petitions, the state must either ensure that quasi-judicial authorities are judicially trained or create a separate class of judicial officers to discharge quasi-judicial functions<\/p>\n<p><strong>National Litigation Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A broadly worded policy such as the National Litigation Policy (2010) only provides a distant goalpost of transforming government into a \u201cmodel litigant\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>However, what is needed is an implementable action plan to ensure that citizens are not forced to file cases against the government and its agencies in the first place. This will require a relook at the functioning of litigation-prone departments and formulating solutions unique to each department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tackling government litigation\u00a0 Context It is trite (lacking originality or freshness) to say that the government is the biggest litigant in India. No less than the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India have acknowledged this in the recent past, goading (provoke or annoy (someone) so as to stimulate an action or reaction.) the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tackling-government-litigation\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tackling government litigation\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}