The Union government is currently party to more than 6.35 lakh cases pending in various courts across the country and in the last five years has had to shell out more than Rs 270 crore in litigation expenses.
The data was provided by the Union Minister for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal in a written reply to a question by BJP Lok Sabha MP Dushyant Singh.
The minister told the House that there are 6,36,605 cases pending in the courts in which various ministries and departments of the Central government are a party.
The top three ministries in the list which are battling litigation include Finance with over 1.79 lakh cases followed by Railways and Defence with 1.10 lakh and 87,000 cases, respectively. The three ministries together account for almost 60 percent of the Union’s pending litigation.
Parliamentary Affairs with 5, Panchayati Raj with 14, and North East Development with 27 are the three ministries least burdened with court cases.
In response to the MP’s question, the government has also provided details of expenditures being incurred in litigation between financial years 2018-19 to 2022-23 which has cost more than Rs 50 crores to the central exchequer on average every year. The highest expenditure during this period was in 2019-20 (Rs 60,40,71,128) and the lowest in 1921-22 (Rs 48,37,38,252).
Law Minister Meghwal informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that as per the data available with the Integrated Case Management System as on July 1, a total of 69,766 cases are pending before the Supreme Court of India.
The pendency of cases before the high courts and subordinate courts as on July 14 was 60,62,953 and 4,41,35,357 respectively as per the National Judicial Data Grid.
In total, more than five crore cases are currently pending across courts in the country.
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