Pendency of petty cases to be reduced to 50% in three months: Official

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) Pendency of petty cases will be brought down to 50 per cent in three months, a senior official announced on Wednesday.

"In three months I assure you, I will bring down the pendency of petty cases like traffic violations, cheque bounce etc, to 50 per cent," said Law Secretary Suresh Chandra after a meeting with other ministries on ways to reduce the pendency of cases. 

Now, in one case, multiple government advocates will not be involved, he said, adding that the move will reduce wastage of money and the stand of advocates will be uniform, not contradictory.

Chandra further said in next six months, cases relating to freedom fighters will be dealt with.

"There are 10,000 to 11,000 cases pending through the country relating to freedom fighters. We are trying to expedite judgments in these cases. There are some genuine cases and some false cases. Home Ministry will investigate and in six months, there has to be zero pendency of these cases and we will achieve it," he said.

These cases relate to getting of pension by a person claiming to have taken part in the freedom struggle, or the Home Ministry not having documents of person claiming to be a freedom fighter.

Chandra chaired the meeting with nodal officers from other ministries on the functioning of Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS), a web-based online tool for monitoring court cases transparently and proactively, to reduce government litigation and make it more efficient. 

He said LIMBS is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India Mission with an aim to digitalise the entire process of court cases for effective monitoring.

Through a notification issued on February 8, 2016 by the Legal Affairs Department, all the Union Ministries, their departments, sub departments, attached offices and independent bodies were brought under its ambit, and it has been successfully implemented in all.

LIMBS, Chandra said, seamlessly integrates all the stakeholders, including ministry users, nodal officers, government advocates, Law Ministry officials, arbitrators and claimants, to upload the latest information which is concurrently available on real time basis on a single unified platform to avoid confusion, delay and financial burden.

"LIMBS enabled more than 7,800 users from 62 ministries to upload 2.91 lakh court cases in a short span of two years. Presence of more than 15,000 advocates enables this application to get the latest information directly from courtroom," he said, adding that system generated SMS alerts are sent to advocates, users and officers concerned about the forthcoming cases so that none of them go unnoticed.

A Single Window Clearance system has been devised to monitor the timelines of filing of appeals/SLPs in the court.

"This system captures information related with appeal/SLPs right from pronouncement of judgment in lower court, their examination at department level, advice by Department of Legal Affairs and Central Agency Section. By this system, all stakeholders would be able to track and monitor cases through a customised dashboard. The stakeholders would also receive SMS alerts," Chandra told the officers in the meeting.

He said highest priority has been assigned to important cases, with a simple interface developed in the LIMBS to monitor the important cases in more proactive manner, so that none of these go unnoticed.

Chandra told the nodal officers that uploading of documents on LIMBS website in important cases must be completed by July 15.

Earlier, information about cases involving 64 ministries/departments was scattered in different places, typically in the form of physical files, but is now available on this single electronic platform.