A meeting was convened by AS(JN) on 22.06.2018 with all the Joint Secretaries of Department of Defence, JS(ESW) and LA(Def) to deliberate upon the above said issue.
Representatives of the JAG(Army) and JAG(Navy) were also present in the meeting.
2. Initiating the discussion, AS(JN) gave the background of the meeting and informed that recently Supreme Court had imposed a penalty of 1 Lakh on Ministry of Defence for repeatedly filing SLPs over the issue which are already decided by the Apex court.
There is an urgent need to take appropriate measures to withdraw such cases so as to avoid further embarrassment and penalty/strictures in similar instances.
3. Each participant was thereafter requested to provide details of the existing no. of cases in Supreme Court, High Court, AFTs, CAT and District & Subordinate Courts and the number of cases identified for withdrawal. In response, the following information was provided by the participants regarding their respective Wings/Divisions:
| Name of Wings/Division | Details in r/o Court Cases pending/withdrawn/proposed to be withdrawn. |
| JS(ESW) | A total of 163, 46 & 8 pension cases relating to Army, Air & Navy respectively are pending before the Supreme Court. Out of 163 pension cases of Army, 20 are proposed to be withdrawn. Out of 46 pension cases of Air, 14 have been withdrawn and 22 are proposed to be withdrawn. Out of 8 pension cases of Army, 1 is proposed to be withdrawn. |
| JAG (Army) | Approximately 6000 cases are pending in all the courts inclusive of 1000 cases (approx.) in Supreme Court. |
| Rep. from Navy | There are 388 cases (mostly pension cases) pending in AFT, out of which 79 are proposed to be withdrawn. |
| CAO | 1 case is pending in Supreme Court which has been filed by UPSC with MoD as a proforma respondent. 36 cases are pending before High Courts and 51 cases before CAT. In addition, 6 cases are pending before AFT/lower courts. A vast majority of the cases relate to service matters of civilian employees. |
| BRO | Total 1246 cases are pending, out of which 28 are in supreme Court. |
| PDCP (Principle Directorate of Civilian personnel) of Navy | Total 788 cases are pending, out of which 5 in Supreme Court, 123 in High Court, 26 in District & Subordinate Courts and rest are in CAT |
| JS(Works) | DGDE has 387 cases pending in Supreme court and 37 in CAT. E-in-C has a total of 1310 cases pending, out of which 54 in Supreme Court, 224 in High Court, 844 in CAT & 112 in AFT. |
4. AS(JN) observed that no clear or satisfactory position is emerging from the data provided in the meeting. After detailed deliberation, following action points were agreed upon:-
a) An exercise to be carried out urgently to compile data regarding the total number of existing court cases pending in various courts i.e., Supreme Court, High Court, AFTs, CAT and District & Subordinate Courts, along with appropriate categorisation of cases.
b) Wherever an issue has already been decided against the Department by the Supreme Court, all matters where similar appeals are pending before Supreme Court, High Court, AFTs, CAT and District & Subordinate Courts, shall be identified for withdrawal.
c) In all cases identified for withdrawal in accordance with b) above, appropriate action should be taken for withdrawal of cases expeditiously.
d) As regards the suggestion of LA(Def) to amend the existing policies to bring them in line with the decisions of the Supreme Court wherever the two are in conflict, the issue can be considered once the exercise of quantifying, categorizing and identifying cases for withdrawal as mentioned above has been completed. Similarly, his suggestion to automatically give'consequent relief to all similarly placed persons once a case has been finally decided against the Department and not confine grant of relief only to persons who were litigants in that particular case will also be considered after the above exercise has been completed.
e) AS(JN) requested all participants to complete the action on the points as decided in the meeting and come with all details in the next meeting.
No comments:
Post a Comment