NEW DELHI: Several ministries and departments of the Central government have not been updating the status of court cases being contested by them in different courts and tribunals in the portal designated for it.
The portal, Legal Information Management & Briefing System (LIMBS), was set up to keep a tab on the development of legal matters pertaining to the Centre. According to the Ministry of Law and Justice, some ministries and departments have not revised the details of pending proceedings for more than five years.
The information available on LIMBS is used by agencies such as NITI Aayog and Cabinet Secretariat for planning and other purposes. There are more than 76,000 cases pertaining to 48 ministries and departments, which have not been updated since 2018.
The biggest defaulters are the ministries of railway (31,502 cases not updated since 2018), finance, labour & employment (8,952), defence (12,436), education (3,706) and home affairs (3,000). They jointly accumulate more than 80 per cent of the total pendency. There are over 5.72 lakh live litigations in the courts and tribunals involving ministries and their affiliated departments.
Referring to the issue, the law ministry has recently asked the concerned ministries and departments to suitably instruct the point persons to update the current status of the cases and sought an action taken report for further review and examination.
“In a recent review of the data on LIMBS, it has been observed that the details are not being updated regularly by the users... The cases inter alia include those that have not been updated for more than five years. In such a situation, it becomes difficult for this department (of legal affairs), being the nodal officer, to provide reliable data on ongoing court cases to the Cabinet Secretariat, NITI Aayog, and replies to Parliament questions,” read the letter from law ministry to the nodal officers of ministries.
It also added that the efficient functioning of LIMBS requires the users to regularly update the details of court cases.