CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has nearly 1,800 cases pending in the Supreme Court and the state government is making efforts to dispose of them at the earliest.
As per information available with Express, the Home department has the highest number of 607 pending cases. It is followed by Commercial Tax and Registration Department (117), Environment and Forest department (101), electricity board (95) and Housing and Urban Development department (86).
A list is being prepared after the state government has asked 51 departments to come up with the number of cases pending at the Supreme Court so that action could be taken to dispose off the cases at the earliest.
The Housing department as a whole along with Directorate of Town and Country Planning department and Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has a total of 108 cases pending. It is learnt that in many of the cases, the state government has not filed any counter. This also comes in wake of the state government developing a Court Case Monitoring System (CCMS), an IT application platform to monitor cases pending against the concerned department or officials.
However, sources said CCMS does not have a mechanism wherein it could notify why there has been a delay in filing counter and who has failed to do so.
The state government set up CCMS after information provided through Right to Information revealed that Madras High Court has 12,527 petitions of contempt of court pending against government officials while the Madurai Bench has a total of 8,475 Contempt of court cases pending against the officials between the year 2010 to February 16, 2014.
It is learnt that a review meeting was called nearly a month ago by Housing department to find out in how many petitions the counter affidavit has not been filed and in how many petitions the secretary is a respondent.