CHENNAI: Government happens to be the largest litigant because of the expanding horizon of activities they are involved in and there needs to be an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, said Supreme Court judge V Ramasubramanian on Saturday. Speaking at the third conference of Central government standing counsel of southern States, he said.
"About 70 per cent litigations are either filed by or against the government and they need to set a policy to bring down litigations.’’
Referring to innovation by students of National Law School of India University, who had built a consumer online dispute resolution mechanism, he said innovations on similar lines must be advocated to dispose of litigations. Justice Ramasubramanian said the Ministries of Defence (MoD) and Finance (MoF) have brought in measures to internally dispose of litigations without involving a third party.
"The MoD has put in place an expert committee to deal with service matters of persons working with defence ministry,” he said. As regards MoF, “Any case whose monetary effect is less than `one crore is withdrawn from the Supreme Court," he said.
The National Highway Authority of India too have an internal three-tier committee to dispose of cases, he said. "Claims amounting to Rs 7381 crore were settled for an amount of Rs 729 crore during 2017-18 because of the committee," he said.