Why the Indian government needs to make information about its own legal cases more transparent

Of the many pending administrative reforms in India, the burgeoning volume of government litigation often appears to be the most intractable. It has often been repeated in public conversation that the Indian state accounts for 46% of all litigation before Indian courts, though nobody really knows how this figure was arrived at.

Over the last few years, various institutions studying the issue of government litigation, such as the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law & Justice, National Law School of India and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy have all reported an inability to collect accurate information on the pendency of government litigation before Indian courts.

As with much of the administrative chaos within the Indian state, the problem begins with poor record keeping by the Indian state. Even technology, often brandished by the Indian state as the silver bullet for its administrative chaos, has failed to deliver results on the basic issue of providing accurate data on litigation conducted by the Indian state.

The birth and life of LIMBS

In 2016, the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice, launched the Legal Information Management and Briefing System or LIMBS as a web-based common access platform to be used by all government departments to manage their litigation. Based on a software developed by the…

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