Rajasthan HC imposes costs on the applicants

Rajasthan High Court imposed symbolic cost of Rs.1000/- on numerous petitioners who have approached the Court on the same plea on which the Court had already decided twice, with specific instructions to all those with the same plea to approach the concerned Government Department directly , by filing objections and also issuing instructions. The Ministry decides on the objections in the light of the judgment of the court.

“The collection of costs is necessary… to ensure that citizens with genuine grievances have access to justice through the courts.” Otherwise, the doors of justice would be closed to legitimate purposes, solely by the burden of undeserved cases flooding the system… Every litigation must will come to an end at some point, and similar and identical legal disputes must not be allowed to flourish again and again for the luxury of the litigants who unnecessarily burden this court by repeatedly demanding a similar order.”

The bank of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand ruled that such repeated petitions constituted an abuse of the legal process, consuming the court’s time and clogging up the infrastructure. It said,

“Courts are overloaded with various types of litigation. Filing similar, repeated, identical and unfounded petitions poses a serious threat to the administration of justice. They waste time and clog up infrastructure. Productive resources that should be used to deal with genuine lawsuits are wasted in dealing with the cases filed just to obtain similar compensation that has already been granted through the issuance of the judgment in rem. Filing similar petitions on meritless grounds constitutes a gross abuse of the judicial process and a waste of valuable time of the court.”

The court was hearing a batch of petitions requesting the Rajasthan School Education Department to grant it an annual allowance for services provided within a specified period. It was submitted that the controversy in the case had already been settled Vijay Singh v. State of Rajasthan & Ors. (Vijay Singh case) It was also decided that the state should comply with them and thus had acquired legal force. Therefore, it was argued that the present petitions should also be decided in accordance with this judgment.

The court noted that after the decision in the Vijay Singh case, thousands of identical petitions seeking similar orders were filed and subsequently, after taking the situation seriously, the court decided on a number of such petitions Ramesh Chandra Sharma v. State of Rajasthan and Ors. (Ramesh Chandra case) It categorically mentioned that those who did not approach the court should approach the concerned ministry directly, which was expected to decide the pleas as per the judgment passed in the Vijay Singh case.

The court held that the controversy had already been settled twice and that these repeated petitions were an example of a decided matter not only consuming the court’s time but also consuming the time of other litigants who were on waiting for their cases to be resolved. The court ruled that it should not allow other litigants’ valuable time to be taken up by abusing judicial leniency.

The court referred to the Supreme Court case Dnyandeo Sabaji Naik and another versus Pradnya Prakash Khandekar and others It stated that such a tendency towards repeated trials constituted an abuse of rights and could only be curbed if the courts adopted an institutional approach to penalizing such behavior.

“It is the duty of every court to deal decisively with such situations. The collection of sample costs is a necessary tool that must be used to weed out frivolous lawsuits and prevent them from being filed. The imposition of real-time costs is also necessary to ensure that citizens with genuine grievances have access to the courts… Therefore, it is not just a matter of discretion, but a duty and obligation of all courts to ensure that the legal system is not exploited by those , which use the forms of law to prevent or delay justice.”

In view of this, the court imposed a token amount of Rs. 1000 per applicant to be deposited with the Litigants Welfare Fund of the Rajasthan High Court within a week after which the concerned department was directed to pay over within three weeks to decide the representation of this applicant.

Accordingly, the petitions were dismissed with the freedom of the petitioners to approach the court if their objections were decided negatively or not decided within three weeks as stipulated.

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

Quote: 2024 LiveLaw (Raj) 422

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