Filing Of Repeated, Identical Petitions Is A Serious Menace To Administration Of Justice: Rajasthan HC Imposes Costs On Petitioners

Rajasthan High Court imposed symbolic cost of Rs. 1000/- on numerous petitioners for approaching the Court with the same cause of action that had already been decided by the Court on two occasions with specific directions to everyone with same cause of action to directly approach the concerned Government Department by filing representations and also directing the Department to decide the representations in light of the Court's judgment.

“Imposition of cost is necessary… to ensure that access to justice by Courts is available to the citizens with genuine grievances. Otherwise, the doors of justice would be shut to legitimate causes simply by the weight of undeserving cases which flood the system… Every litigation has to come to an end at some point of time and similar and identical litigation cannot be allowed to flourish again and again for the luxury of the litigants, who are burdening this Court unnecessarily seeking similar order again and again.”

The bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand ruled that such repeated petitions amounted to abuse of the process of law that consumed Court's time and clogged the infrastructure. It held that,

“Courts are chocked with several kinds of litigation. Filing of similar, repeated, identical and groundless petitions constitute a serious menace to the administration of justice. They consume time and clog the infrastructure. Productive resources which should be deployed in the handling of genuine causes are dissipated in attending the cases filed only to get similar relief which has already been granted by making the judgment in rem. Filing of such similar petitions for worthless cause amounts to gross abuse of the process of law and wastage of valuable time of the Court.”

The Court was hearing a bunch of petitions seeking directions to the Department of School Education, Rajasthan, to grant annual increment to them for the services granted within a specific period. It was submitted that the controversy was already settled in the case of Vijay Singh v State of Rajasthan & Ors. (Vijay Singh Case) which was also decided to be complied with by the State, hence it had attained finality. Hence, it was argued that the current petitions be also decided in line with that judgment.

The Court observed that after the Vijay Singh Case was decided, thousands of identical petitions were filed seeking similar orders, and subsequently, taking serious note of the situation, the Court decided a bunch of such petitions in Ramesh Chandra Sharma v State of Rajasthan and Ors. (Ramesh Chandra Case) in which it was categorically mentioned that those who did not approach the Court should directly approach the concerned Department which was expected to decide the representations as per the judgment passed in the Vijay Singh Case.

The Court opined that the controversy was already settled twice, and such repeated petitions was an illustration of how a decided issue not only occupied Court's time but also consumed the time of other litigants who were waiting for disposal of their cases. The Court held that valuable time of other litigants could not be allowed to be taken by such litigants by misusing judicial leniency.

The Court referred to the Supreme Court case of Dnyandeo Sabaji Naik and another vs. Pradnya Prakash Khandekar and others in which it was held that, such tendency of repeated litigations was abuse of law and could be curbed only if courts adopted an institutional approach of penalizing such behaviour.

“It is the duty of every court to firmly deal with such situations. The imposition of exemplary costs is a necessary instrument which has to be deployed to weed out, as well as to prevent the filing of frivolous cases… Imposition of real time costs is also necessary to ensure that access to courts is available to citizens with genuine grievances… Hence it is not merely a matter of discretion but a duty and obligation cast upon all courts to ensure that the legal system is not exploited by those who use the forms of the law to defeat or delay justice.”

In this background, the Court imposed a symbolic amount of token cost of Rs. 1000 on each of the petitioners to be deposited in the Litigants Welfare Fund of Rajasthan High Court within one week pursuant to which the concerned Department was directed to decide the representation of such petitioner within three weeks.

Accordingly, the petitions were disposed of with liberty to the petitioners to approach the Court in case their representations were decided adversely or were not decided within 3 weeks as stipulated.

Title: Umesh Chandra Prakash v State of Rajasthan & Ors., and other connected petitions

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Raj) 422

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