Litigation Management as Fiscal Governance: The Structural Imperative for Reform

India’s Union government is currently party to more than 7.3 lakh legal cases. This litigation footprint is not only the largest in the country but also the most complex and expensive to manage. The data published by the Ministry of Law and Justice in July 2024 revealed that the weight of litigation has increased almost twofold within only five years: 4.11 lakh in 2019 and more than 7.3 lakh currently.

This growth has not been matched by the similar enhancements in the case preparedness, resolution time and cost efficiency. Lack of litigation management infrastructure still imposes a burden on the capacity of the states, consumes state funds and brings unnecessary bottlenecks in the process of executing essential government programmes. With India ramping up its public investment pledges in infrastructure, digital infrastructural goods and welfare provision, litigation reform must move from being a judicial issue to a government priority.

Three Union ministries account for more than 57 percent of all pending cases:

• Ministry of Finance: ~1.89 lakh cases

• Ministry of Railways: ~1.14 lakh cases

• Ministry of Defence: ~95,467 cases

These caseloads stem from recurring issues: tax disputes, land acquisition and compensation claims, contract enforcement matters, and service-related grievances. What makes this significant is not only the volume of litigation, but the downstream costs these disputes generate.

For example, pending tax matters often tie up huge amounts of revenue in court, halting the financial flows and making it difficult to predict the budget. Acquisition and compensation delays cause major infrastructure projects to stall resulting in time and cost increase. Defence Contract disputes may put the procurement of important equipment on hold and this has a direct impact on strategic preparedness. All of these consequences are well documented, and yet they keep adding up to each other due to time lag in resolving the problem.

The costs incurred are not limited to legal fees. They include:

• Interest payments on withheld amounts

• Delayed disbursal of project funds

• Underutilised assets where infrastructure is left incomplete

• Administrative inefficiency arising from the diversion of officer time to litigation

This latent cost is difficult to account for in traditional budget documents, but its fiscal effect is real and growing.

Although certain reforms in the litigation policy have been made such as the National Litigation Policy of 2010, internal guidelines by ministries as well as the creation of the Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS), the implementation remains uneven and limited structurally. Persistent bottlenecks include:

1. Fragmented Workflows

   The vast majority of litigation preparation is based on the siloed coordination of the legal, administrative, and technical teams. Most case briefs will demand the contribution of various wings resulting in disjointed schedules and unclear accountability. Adjournments frequently result from missing documentation, delayed approvals, or unprepared counsel.

2. Limited Functional Digitisation

   LIMBS was introduced with an aim of developing visibility to government litigation. However, it functions more as a case tracking system and not a workflow enforcer. It does not have role-based access, structured documentation protocols and hearing readiness indicators. This has led to ministries being conscious of pendency, but passive regarding preparation.

3. Disconnect Between Field and Secretariat

   Several High Courts have highlighted the need for litigation management systems to extend to field officers and not just legal cells in the Secretariat. In The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, Justice B. Pugalendhi directed the Tamil Nadu government to operationalise digital access for district-level officers, citing delays caused by oral briefings and manual file movement. Without this decentralisation, case readiness continues to suffer. 4. Inadequate Use of Litigation Data The majority of ministries still lack analytics regarding case trends, frequent litigants, pendency age, and value at risk. The litigation dashboards are hardly used to prioritize high-impact matters or assess the performance of the counsels. In its absence, decision-making remains ad hoc. 5. Policy and Fiscal Lock-In In the Ministry of Finance, there are huge indirect tax cases pending over the years, and the revenue remains effectively frozen. Railways frequently face delays in land compensation which leads to construction standstills. Defence contracts, often involving international vendors, suffer protracted resolution cycles that damage procurement credibility.

The notion of the state as a “model litigant” is not new. The Supreme Court and the different High Courts have on several occasions urged the Union and State governments to ensure that unnecessary appeals are kept at a minimum, settlements should be sought whenever feasible, and unnecessary technicalities should be avoided that prolong litigation. However, these objectives involve systemic enablers, and not just policy circulars.

A functioning model litigant framework must be underpinned by:

• A single, integrated case repository with search and audit capabilities

• Role-based workflows that assign case preparation tasks across departments

• Real-time integration with court and tribunal systems for status tracking

• Hearing preparation protocols that ensure complete and timely briefs

• Analytics on pendency, value, success rates, and bottleneck tracking

• Uniform standards for appeal decision-making across ministries

• Centralised performance dashboards accessible to senior officials

Such a framework can prevent fragmented filings, reduce adjournments, and bring uniformity to how the government approaches dispute resolution.

The current requirement extends beyond mere digital tracking to the establishment of a comprehensive litigation lifecycle management framework. This framework must encompass the complete spectrum of litigation activities, including creating, tracking, managing, collaborating, escalating, and reporting on legal matters across their entire lifecycle from notice issuance and case intake to hearing management, order compliance, and case closure. The platform seamlessly integrates with legal counsel, internal departments, court systems, and document repositories, enabling coordinated workflows, real-time visibility, and accountable litigation governance.

It is within this context that platforms such as Jupitice Litigation ERP acquire significant institutional relevance. Built on a meta-product architecture, the platform enables ministries and government bodies to digitize and manage the entire litigation lifecycle end-to-end. It establishes centralized workflows, clearly defines roles and accountability, integrates with court systems for real-time case updates, and leverages AI-driven capabilities to ensure document preparedness and informed precedent analysis.

Most importantly, the platform transforms litigation from a fragmented, paper-intensive exercise into a coordinated, data-driven digital function. The focus is not on replacing human judgment, but on embedding institutional memory, comprehensive case histories, and systematic compliance tracking into a repeatable, scalable, and sustainable governance system.

The legal system in India is struggling to cope with a massive backlog and case load stress. However, government litigation is a subset over which the state retains direct control. It is administratively within its power to reform its own caseload and set the administrational tone towards more systematic reform.

This reform must be structural:

• Ministries need not just data, but a system that assigns responsibility, tracks readiness, and prevents delay

• Legal officers need tools to collaborate across departments, not chase documentation weeks before hearings

• Policy makers need dashboards to prioritise high-risk matters and reallocate resources intelligently

• Courts need assurance that cases will be argued with consistency, preparedness, and discipline

The government does not just decrease pendency by investing in this infrastructure. It gives a message to citizens, investors, and institutions that it does not treat the rule of law lightly, not just in what it enacts, but also in the way it participates in litigation.

The scale of litigation that is presently being undertaken by the government is unsustainable and procedurally inefficient. Any delay in court does not only pose a waste of judicial time, it is also a waste of taxpayer money. The state administrative machinery should be prepared to litigate as rigorously as it legislates or carries out the public policy.

This is not a question of legal success rates, but of institutional maturity. A state with development goals to accomplish without remedying its litigation management will continue to lose time, money, and trust of people. Building an integrated litigation infrastructure is no longer a choice. It is a prerequisite for credible, efficient governance.