MANAGING GOVERNMENT’S LITIGATION THROUGH NLP

The Centre and states together account for 70% of the 3 crore cases pending in various courts in India -- or over 2.1 crore cases, making government the largest litigant in India.

Now, the Centre has formulated a National Litigation Policy (NLP), which will help both it and the states -- which are only too eager to adopt it -- shed this shameful tag in the next four years and decongest the dockets of the courts.
First and foremost, the policy, drafted by Attorney General G E Vahanvati and vetted by Moily, aims to make "appeal not mandatory in every case".

It will put in place a comprehensive mechanism that will impress upon the departmental heads not to go for appeals and litigation against citizens just to harass them. The "let the court decide" attitude will be given a go bye, NLP stressed.

In addition, it will provide efficient lawyers to the government departments by selecting them through a strict scrutiny and will remove any lawyer in the government panel if he or she is found to be asking for repeated adjournments.

Arbitration will be the main stay for the resolution of disputes with citizen and the entire process of arbitration would be made corruption free -- vetting of arbitration agreements and providing a clause that would warrant sacking of lawyers found delaying the process.

HIGHLIGHTS

* To transform the central government into an efficient and responsible litigant focussing only on core issues
* Conducting litigation in a time bound manner
* Ensure that good cases are won but bad cases not persevered with
* Every effort must be made to improve government representation
* Screening Committees to monitor every litigation
* All litigation to be conducted on the premise that citizens come first and government is not there to trample on fundamental rights
* Arbitration to be accepted as mainstay and all corruption in arbitration proceeding to be removed
* Arbitration agreements to be very carefully drafted. Every arbitration case to be monitored and lawyers who are found to delay arbitration should be sacked
* Appeal in every case must stop
* Government litigation share in all courts in India is 70% - to reduce it by 50%