BENGALURU: Coming down heavily on the state government for “having scant regard for the judicial time wasted due to the cavalier fashion of filing numerous meritless petitions”, ignoring the opinion of the law department, the Karnataka High Court directed the government to calculate the cost of such frivolous petitions and recover it from the officer concerned, if such petitions are not entertained by the court.
“The high court cannot be treated like a dustbin by the largest litigant,” the court observed, referring to the state government. It also directed the government to circulate the litigation policy called ‘Karnataka State Dispute Resolution Policy 2021’ formulated by the Law department to avoid unnecessary litigations, to the heads of all departments and stakeholders, and conduct workshops to educate them about the policy and its implementation.
A division bench of Justice G Narendar and Justice PN Desai passed the order while dismissing the petition filed by the Home department, challenging the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal order which set aside charges against retired assistant sub-inspector Rahamathulla, in a disproportionate assets case registered by Lokayukta police in 2014.
“We feel the time has come where this court is required to send a message to the biggest litigant, the state government, and that merely because it is the biggest litigant, it will not be a license to enable it to file all and sundry cases, which eat into valuable judicial time. The irony is that the state is one of the prime movers to popularise the Alternate Dispute Resolution System.
In this background, the state cannot be the reason for the docket explosion,” the court said. Referring to the case against the ASI, the court observed that the enquiry officer has taken assets possessed by the ASI before he entered service, and reported that the charges are proved. Desisting from imposing the exemplary cost of Rs 10 lakh on the government, the court made it clear that this shall be treated as a last warning.