CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has more than 1,000 cases pending before the Supreme court and while efforts are on to dispose of the pending cases, the state is finding a major challenge in clearing the pending bills of legal counsels hired by it.
It is learnt that a high-level meeting, convened by the Chief Secretary, has taken a serious note of the issue and all departments have been asked to submit a report giving details about fees pending for the senior counsels or senior advocates of the Supreme Court.
As per figures available from 2016, Tamil Nadu has nearly 1,800 cases pending in the Supreme Court and the Home department has 607 cases, the highest in any department. It is followed by the Commercial Tax and Registration Department (117), Environment and Forest department (101), state Electricity Board (95) and state Housing and Urban Development department (86).
It is learnt that the state government is planning to upload details of the Supreme court cases department-wise in the Court Case Monitoring System (CCMS), an IT application platform, which monitors cases pending against the departments or officials.
Sources told Express that the Home department would also be making a provision wherein court fee bills would also be uploaded. The state government is contemplating earmarking a nodal officer for the Supreme Court to look into the issue.
This comes as the state government is trying to bring down pending cases by filing counter-affidavits. Similarly, efforts are also being made to bring down the number of pending contempt of court cases which are more against the heads of the department.