Appoint Nodal Officer to deal with engagement and payment of fees of Advocate General, Additional AGs: Madras High Court to Tamil Nadu

The Madras High Court Tuesday directed the Tamil Nadu government to appoint a nodal officer holding the rank of Secretary or Additional Secretary to deal with all requests by the State departments to engage the Advocate General (AG) or the Additional Advocate Generals in important cases before the Court..A bench of Justices R Suresh Kumar and K Kumaresh Babu also directed that such nodal officer must be responsible for looking after the professional fees claims made by the AG, Additional AG or other senior law officers of the State, and should ensure that their fees are paid within 30 days of raising such claims..The Court issued the directions while disposing of a plea filed by former TN Additional AG S Ramasamy in 2011, seeking payment of ₹1.95 crores due as his professional legal fees for having appeared in several matters for the State during his tenure as the Additional AG between the years 2006 and 2011.While Ramasamy's fee was finally paid by the TN government earlier this year following the High Court's intervention, the Court said there was an urgent need to have a system in place to avoid such delays in future..The Bench also took note of a letter written to the State government by the current TN Advocate General R Shunmugasundaram on June 8 this year seeking a uniform system to engage State law officers and to ratify and pay their fees within a fixed time limit. The AG said that such uniform system was required to streamline engagement of law officers and payment of their fees to avoid embarrassments such as that in the present case. The Court agreed and said that the State government must consider the suggestions made by the AG. It then also issued a specific direction for the appointment of the Nodal officer. ."In this regard, a Nodal officer in the rank of Secretary or Additional Secretary of the State Government shall be specifically nominated for the purpose of dealing with the requests made on behalf of the various departments for nomination of Advocate General and Additional Advocate General for the appearance in important cases by or against the State Government and its Departments. The Nodal Officer shall also consider and look after the professional fee claim made from time to time by various law officers starting from Advocate General, Additional Advocate General, State Government Pleader, Special Government Pleader, Additional Government Pleader, Government Advocate, etc.,. and those professional bills, which are made/claimed by such law officers shall be examined and disposed either by way of making the payment or if any ineligible amount is claimed, as per the conditions of appointment of law officers, that can also be stated to the law officers, either way, the claim should be disposed of within a period of 30 days from the date of such claim is made by the law officer concerned," the Court said..[Read Judgment]