Thousands of cases pending in courts: DMK

CHENNAI: Even after appointing so many judges there are several thousand cases pending in courts, said DMK member S Sudarsanam. Speaking during a debate on grants for the law, prison and court departments, the legislator from Madhavaram said the government had failed to appoint ‘proper’ government lawyers as many of them were not arguing the cases.

A majority of the cases in the Madras high court is against the government. “There are many cases against the government pending in Madras high court. This is due to the government lawyers not arguing the cases properly and mostly they seek adjournment. The government must at least appoint better government lawyers,” said Sudarsanam.

Replying to the accusation, law minister C Ve Shanmugam said after the Supreme Court told all states to follow proper guidelines we appointed lawyers as per the order. “We are only following the then Madras high court chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s guidelines as per the Supreme Court order on appointing government lawyers. If you name a case in which a government lawyer did not argue properly we are ready to take action against him,” said Shanmugam.

Similarly, for the family courts too the Supreme Court has given guidelines on using video conference. “In many family cases, either the wife or the husband is not present when the case is heard as either of them will be outside the city or country. The case is then adjourned. Here too the government must use video conference to talk to either the husband or wife during the case hearing,” said Sudarsanam.

The DMK MLA also wanted the government to extent the estamping to other courts. “The government must extent estamp to lower courts too. As of now it is available only in Madras high court. Similarly on issuing of notices to people involved in the case, the government must digitise the payment to save time. We are still following the British on this issue,” he said.

On the prison department, he said first time prisoners as well as youth prisoners are being put in prison cells with murder convicts. “A person is put in prison only to make him better. By putting the first time prisoner along with a murder convict, the government is only making an even bigger criminal on his release,” said Sudarsanam.

Sudarsanam said there are many vacancies which are yet to be fulfilled. The minister said only 561 vacancies are yet to be fulfilled and soon steps will be taken to fulfill all the vacancies.