Dept heads shall record opinion to file plea ignoring legal opinion, HC tells state

The high court has said that if a government department decides to prefer a petition/appeal/revision, ignoring the legal opinion then an opinion shall be recorded in writing by the head of the department setting out reasons.

A division bench headed by Justice G Narendar said this while dismissing a petition filed by the state government against a retired Assistant Police Sub Inspector.

The Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal (KSAT) had quashed the enquiry against Rahamathulla, retired ASI, in relation to a disproportionate assets case. The state government moved the petition challenging this order, ignoring the legal opinion.

"In the event of there being an opinion by the Law Department, opining against preferring of an petition/appeal/revision etc. and if the concerned department is of a different opinion then, an opinion should be recorded in writing by the Head of the Department, setting out the reason why the appeal/revision/writ petition etc. needs to be filed ignoring the opinion of the Law Department/legal opinion," the bench said. The court added that if such a plea is not entertained by the court the government shall mandatorily calculate and recover the cost of that particular limb of litigation from the officer concerned.

The bench said that the Karnataka State Dispute Resolution Policy 2021, formulated by the Law Department, shall be circulated to the Chief Secretary and all department heads within a period of three weeks. "We feel that time has come where this court is required to send a message to the biggest litigant (government) and that merely because it is the biggest litigant, it will not be a license to enable it in filing all and sundry cases, which eat into the valuable judicial time. The irony is that the state is one of the prime movers to popularise the Alternate Dispute Resolution System and in this background the state cannot be the reason for docket explosion," the bench said.

In the case on hand, the bench said that allegations against Rahamathulla have been disproved in the course of cross-examination and from every conceivable angle. The court noted that in the cross examination, it was elicited that Rahamathulla’s wife was carrying on tailoring business and was having an independent source of income and his son, an engineer by profession, was gainfully employed in Bengaluru.