CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is yet to file counter-affidavits in 3,447 cases, despite setting up a Court Case Monitoring System (CCMS), an IT-based application to monitor cases pending against State government departments or officials.
Official sources indicated that during a high-level meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary recently, all Secretaries were urged to take effective steps to file counter-affidavits at the earliest.
Many a time the cases pertaining to departments are not fed into the CCMS. The meeting has urged Secretaries to enter all contempt cases, both pertaining to Secretariat as well as departments, into the CCMS, sources added.
The CCMS was created after more than 20,000 contempt of court petitions remained pending against Tamil Nadu government officials in the Madras High Court here and Madurai Bench between 2010 and February 16, 2014.
Meanwhile, the State government has told all Secretaries and department heads not to make any noting on the original High Court orders, which are being used to appeal before division benches.
The Madras High Court Registry has been directed not to entertain any appeal with endorsements made on the copy of order.
This comes after an order was passed by the Bench comprising Justice K K Sasidharan and Justice P Velmurugan on February 21.
The judges in their order said they have observed that the head of the department to whom the certified copies are dispatched by the registry tend to make endorsements on the order and the same copy is filed before the court and have directed the registry not to entertain any appeals with endorsements made on the copy of the order.