‘Vexatious litigations will be dismissed with heavy costs'

 Dismissing a plea moved by a person seeking pension benefits after 19 years of her retirement and that too after resigning from her job, Justice SM Subramaniam, said: “A large number of litigants, more specifically, the employees of the State and Union are approaching the court even for subsistence allowance, monthly pension and pensionary benefits and other genuine grievances. The High Court is unable to dispose of genuine cases, owing to a large number of unnecessary litigations coming in and kept pending for years together.” 

The judge also pointed out that even government departments are mechanically filing appeals by spending huge money on some untenable opinions offered by the government pleaders and hence ought to be dismissed with costs.

 He further noted that a large number of writ petitions are filed in the High Courts, merely on the ground that despite several representations, the government has failed to take a decision and pass orders and the courts also in a routine manner are issuing directions to the authorities concerned to consider the representations.

 “Creating a cause of action is the recent trend being developed nowadays amongst a few persons, who all are attempting to achieve their goal indirectly. All such writ proceedings filed to achieve the goal indirectly by illegal or irregular means can never be encouraged or entertained. All such litigations are to be rejected with heavy costs,” Justice Subramaniam said.

 Also, observing that the remedy of a writ is an extraordinary one, wherein the affected person is expected to approach the High Court soon after the cause of action, Justice Subramaniam held: “Thus, the High Court should not entertain the petitions filed beyond the reasonable period of time and based on the created cause of actions.”