Expressing suspicion that many government advocates have been colluding with  “land grabbers” in court cases, the Joint Legislature Committee on Encroachments of Government Land has suggested a new mechanism to select the government advocates.

In its second interim report presented in the Legislature, the committee, headed by A T Ramaswamy, has observed that while land grabbers were boldly initiating cases against the government on the basis of “concocted documents” many government departments were not at all pursuing the cases with any diligence.
It pointed out that in many instances the private parties were allowed to enjoy the benefit of temporary injunctions for over 10 years by the advocates representing the government on the ground that the departments concerned had not furnished details to them in time to place before the Court.

Even in cases where departments had given information to the advocates, the committee found that “advocates did not evince any interest in defending the cases and worse, side with the private parties leading to suspicion that there was collusion.”

To ensure that no extraneous factors come in to the selection of government advocates, the Committee has suggested constitution of a high-level panel with State Advocate General as its chairperson, Chief Secretary, a district judge nominated by the Chief Justice of the High Court and Law Secretary as members.

‘Evaluate’
It suggested that the panel should evaluate the performance of all existing advocates representing the government departments and other statutory bodies in various courts and terminate their services if they had failed to safeguard the interest of the government. In both cases, the decision of the panel should be final, the panel suggested.

In a bid to encourage the government advocates, who defend government’s cases with commitment, the panel suggested, that they should be given an additional incentive up to Rs 10,000 for every case decided in favour of the Government.

To improve the quality of applications and petitions that were to be filed on behalf of the government in courts, the Committee suggested that the trained students of the National Law School of India University can be utilised as the University has agreed to attach the students to the office of the Advocate General as part of their internship.

While suggesting that the Law Department should be computerised to monitor the progress of pending cases, the Committee advised the government to constitute legal cell in every department based on the model of Commercial Taxes Department, which is evolving a computerised system to monitor court cases besides following a systematic method manually to follow up the cases on a day-to-day basis.

 As the exiting legal cells have failed in their duty of monitoring important court cases, the government wakes up only when the chair, table and sofa set of the Chief Secretary are attached by courts for not adhering to directions issued, the report said while also referring to an instance in which the High Court passed strictures against a government advocate and law department for “betraying the trust of the government. 

HEADS CLUELESS ABOUT DUTIES!
All the heads of 17 legal cells in the government and the Law Secretary are not aware of their duties and responsibilities, observes the A T Ramaswamy committee report. The report points out that the Law Secretary is also not aware that he has to hold monthly meeting with legal cell heads government advocates to review the status of pending court cases as per the provision of the Karnataka Government (Transaction of Business) Rules as amended in 2000.

“During a recent meeting with legal cell heads, the Committee found to its horror that they were not even aware of the government orders and everyone smugly asserted that only giving opinion in cases referred to them is their duty and monitoring of pending litigation is not,” the report has disclosed. Worse was that the Law Department had no copy of the government orders about duties and the Committee had to obtain it from the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms.