3,350 pending cases in HC for which state has not filed counter affidavits!

C Shivakumar @ CHENNAI:

Are the state government departments monitoring the pending cases?

The pending cases in which counter affidavits have not been filed by the state departments has gone up from 2,063 cases to 3,350 cases in the last two months sparking a concern from the state Chief secretary.

It is learnt that during a high level meeting held recently, the chief secretary has observed that many departments have pendency of over 100 cases.

These include school education department, Municipal administration and Water Supply, Health and Family Welfare, Home, Housing, higher education, revenue and higher education which has pendency of over 100 cases.

Interestingly, during the earlier meeting the number of pending cases had gone up from 2,063 cases to 3,116 cases. At that time, sources said the pending cases had gone up with the integration of court cases with that of the office of government pleader. Interestingly, at that time there were 513 pending cases and the state had filed counter affidavits in only 56 cases.

This comes as the state is planning mechanism to monitor the pending cases in courts across the state through National Informatics Commission (NIC) which is extending the software application to the entire state. Currently, Court Case Monitoring System, the web-enabled system collects information on court cases of all the departments in the secretariat only.

During the high level meeting it was also observed that seven contempt cases are still pending for want of filing counter affidavits.  Top officials were asked to take action in filing the counter affidavits and following up the cases.

It is learnt that many state departments have convened a meeting to cut down on pending cases. It is learnt that the housing department, which alone has a total of 184 cases pending for which counter affidavit has yet to be filed, has asked officials to file counter affidavits at the earliest.

Meanwhile, efforts are on to enter the pending cases of Supreme Court in the software so that the status of pending cases will be reviewed by secretaries of the departments.

It is learnt that there are more than 1,000 cases pending before the Supreme Court and while efforts are on to dispose the pending cases, the state is finding a major challenge in clearing the pending bills of legal counsels hired by it. It is learnt that the chief secretary has urged all secretaries to follow up the pending fee bills of senior counsels so that they are settled at the earliest.