June 2014
Make anyone who indulges in endless litigation pay: SC After hearing arguments for countless hours for more than two years in the Sahara case, the Supreme Court sent a request to Parliament: please enact a ‘Code of Compulsory Compensation’ (CCC).
By Tarunkumar G. Singhal, Raman Jokhakar Chartered Accountants
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“The suggestion to the legislature is to formulate a mechanism that anyone who initiates and continues litigation senselessly, pays for the same. It is suggested that the legislature should consider introduction of a ‘Code of Compulsory Cost’,” said a bench of Justices K. S. Radhakrishnan and J. S. Khehar.
Citing the Sahara case, the bench said Indian judiciary was grossly afflicted with frivolous litigation and the need was to find ways and means to deter litigants from their compulsive obsession towards senseless and illconsidered claims.
“What is sought to be redressed (through CCC) is a habituation to press illegitimate claims. This practice and pattern is so rampant that in most cases, disputes which ought to have been settled in no time at all before the first court of incidence, are prolonged endlessly, for years and years, from court to court, up to the highest court,” it said.
(Source: The Times of India, dated 07-05-2014)
(Comment: The functionaries of the State, particularly senior officials of the various Revenue Departments should be personally made to pay for frivolous litigation initiated and sanctioned by them)
