Chennai: In a bid to curtail unnecessary litigations and utilize the judicial hours for the purpose of rendering complete justice to the poor needy and the litigants, who all are approaching the court of law with genuine grievances, the Madras high court has said the court has to identify the vexatious petitions and reject the same with heavy cost and the state also has to avoid filing unnecessary appeals.
Justice S.M.Subramaniam said the precious judicial hours are to be utilized so as to provide justice to the needy people. High court being the temple of justice must ensure that speedy justice is provided to all the needy and the persons, who are all approaching the court with clean hands by establishing their legal rights. Large number of litigants, more specifically, the employees of state and Union are approaching the court even for subsistence allowance, monthly
pension, pensionary benefits and other genuine grievances. The high court is unable to dispose of those genuine cases on account of the fact that large number of unnecessary litigations are coming in and kept pending for years together, the judge added.
The judge said even the National Litigation Policy as well as the State Litigation Policy implemented by the Union and the state are not effectively working out. Large number of litigations is filed vexatiously. Government appeals are filed for the sake of filing. Government appeals are filed based on some untenable opinions offered by the government pleaders. It is a financial loss to the state exchequer. Even for filing an appeal, the state must ensure that adequate legal grounds are available for filing an appeal. Mechanical filing of appeal at the cost of taxpayers’ money can never be tolerated by the courts. The state being the custodian and trustee of the taxpayers’ money, is bound to spend the money diligently and based on the necessity, the judge added.
The judge said the high courts are overburdened on account of such litigations, wherein the cause of actions were created. This being the factum realized and experienced by many legal luminaries and jurists, this court was of the considered opinion that effective measures were to be taken to control such litigations, which all were consuming the valuable judicial hours and preventing the genuine litigants, who all were longing to get justice. Therefore, in all such cases, wherein the petitions were filed to consider the representation, these principles were to be followed even at the time of admission itself so as to allow the high court to render a complete justice to the needy poor and so as to uphold the noble concept of justice as adopted in the preamble of our Constitution of India, the judge added.
The judge said identification of vexatious petitions were also to be done by the high courts. All such litigations were to be rejected with heavy cost so as to prevent such vexatious litigants from approaching the court again and again.
Therefore, these measures were also to be taken while entertaining the petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India and all such basic principles were to be looked into even at the stage of admission itself to avoid overburdening and preventing the high courts from rendering justice to the needy and deserving citizens of this great nation, the judge added.
