Excessive Government Litigation

According to reports, approximately half of all cases brought before the Indian judiciary are brought by the government. In this post, we will discuss the issue of excessive government litigation as well as the necessity of revising the National Litigation Policy, which was established in 2010.Cases brought by the Indian government account for nearly half of all cases brought before the country’s courts.

An Unreasonable Amount of Government Litigation.There are more than 3 crore cases that are currently being heard by various Indian courts.

Government litigation

According to reports, approximately half of all cases brought before the Indian judiciary are brought by the government.

On the other hand, there are no government sources that can confirm the actual number of lawsuits it has been involved in.

The lack of this statistic is, in and of itself, an indicator of the degree to which different governments have been “interested” in attempting to understand this problem or in meaningfully addressing it.

Government litigation, in addition to being a drain on the public treasury, has been a contributor to the judicial backlog, which has in turn had an effect on the delivery of justice in India.

Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has been harshly critical of successive governments for being indifferent and unimaginative in their pursuit of legal action.

This issue was also investigated by the Law Commission of India for its 126th Report, which was published in 1988, and pertinent observations were made regarding this front.

In 2016, India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, brought up the issue of excessive government litigation.

The argument presented by the government is insufficiently proven in more than nine out of ten instances.

Many of the lawsuits filed against the government are actually cases in which one government department is suing another, with the courts being the ones to make the final decision. When the government files a case, as is the case in the vast majority of other cases, it is observed that the government side fails to prove the point.

Policy on National Litigation, Adopted in 2010 (NLP)

Numerous nations have investigated the possibility of formulating their own litigation policies at the national level. For example, the Australian Taxation Office pursues legal action in accordance with the PS LA 2009/9 Conduct of Tax Office Litigation. This is a comprehensive set of guidelines that requires the government to act as a model litigant and governs how the government must pursue legal action.

A “National Litigation Policy” (NLP) was initiated in the year 2010 by the Law Minister of the United Progressive Alliance government with the intention of transforming the government into a “responsible and efficient” litigant.

The policy mandates “suitable action” be taken against officials who violate this policy and states, in an idealistic manner, that there should be greater accountability regarding governmental litigation.

In addition, the NLP 2010 establishes “Empowered Committees” at both the national and regional levels in order to control how the policy is carried out in practice.

Why did NLP 2010 fail

Because of the lack of clarity, the NLP initiative has been a failure.

The NLP 2010 does not include any provisions for actual implementation.

It is full of empty rhetoric and phraseology that has been used before.

It appears to have been drafted on anecdotal notions of the problem, with no measurable outcomes or implementation mechanism, rather than being an analytical policy document that attempts to address the causes of excessive government litigation. The document also lacks a mechanism for putting the policy into effect.

The NLP 2010 does not offer a benchmark that can be used to evaluate levels of responsibility and productivity.

The term “suitable action” is not defined in the text, nor is there a method outlined for how disciplinary procedures should be carried out.

It is unclear what the role of Empowered Committees is and what their powers are, which contributes to a lack of transparency in how they carry out their duties. In spite of the fact that these committees are meant to be essential components of the accountability mechanisms established by the policy, the lack of clarity regarding their roles and functions makes it possible for the constitution to be used to challenge them.

Additionally, there is no type of impact assessment included in the NLP 2010 to evaluate how effectively it will cut down on government lawsuits. Even today, there is no data that can accurately verify the scale of government litigation in India, which is evidence that there is no monitoring mechanism in place. This is evident from the fact that there is no data. Without such an evaluation, this policy on litigation will continue to be a theoretical document that is vague and largely insufficient, despite being couched in terms of policy reform.

Conclusion

In 2015, following the National Democratic Alliance’s ascension to power, there was talk about conducting an examination of the NLP. This will eventually result in a revised version of the NLP, but not yet. To effectively address the problem, the bureaucracy requires a sufficient amount of motivation. In conclusion, the ongoing revision of the NLP needs to take precautions to guarantee that essential components are not omitted.