State spends Rs 1 lakh and 100 hours in filing each case

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Karnataka State spends Rs.1 lakh and 100 man-hours in preparation of each petition or appeal it files, the High Court of Karnataka recorded in a recent judgement.

The High Court sought this information from the Government after coming across an appeal filed by the State after a delay of 339 days which it found to be “misconceived”.

Taking a tough stand, the High Court imposed a fine each of Rs.50,000 on two Tahsildars, an Assistant Commissioner and a Deputy Commissioner for wasting public funds on unwanted litigation.

“The information placed before this Court by the State itself reveals that more than 100 hours and nearly a Lakhs of Rupees are being spent by the State only up to the stage of filing of a single petition or appeal. It is not in dispute that all these then led to State also formulating a Dispute Resolution Policy, despite such measures, we find that one more misconceived writ appeal before us and that too presented after a delay of 339 days,” the High Court bench of Justice G Narendar and Justice Vijaykumar A Patil said in their judgement on September 25.

The appeal was filed by the Special Tahsildar, Bengaluru South Taluk, Tahasildar, Bengaluru South, Assistant Commissioner, Bengaluru South and Deputy Commissioner (DC), Bengaluru. The respondent was one Nagesh, from Yelachaguppe village in Tavarekere, Bengaluru.

Some petitioners, including Nagesh, had approached the High Court seeking a direction to the Tahsildar to consider their representation and transfer the khatha in their names based on an order passed by the DC. The single-judge bench ordered the authorities to consider the petitioners' grievance within three months.

One year later, the Tahsildar and the other authorities filed an appeal against the single-judge order. Considering this, the Division Bench which heard the appeal said, “It is almost more than a year now and there is no justification on the part of the appellants for maintaining this appeal.”

The Division Bench said that the single judge had given an innocuous order merely asking the authorities to discharge their simple duty. But even then, an appeal was filed against it after one year.

The Bench noted that even earlier, a fine was imposed on the authorities for filing unwanted cases.

“A coordinate bench, of which one of us is a Member, had expressed a serious concern about the amount of time and resources being consumed by misconceived litigation and that too by major litigant i.e., the State.” (WA 719/2023)