Hyderabad: GHMC reeling under 12,000 pending cases for years

HYDERABAD: With over 12,000 court cases pending, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has been reeling under litigation for the past several years.
According to an official data, the majority of them (8,424) are pending in the high court, 3,317 of them are pending in the city's civil courts, 317 cases pending in Lokayukta, 121 under HRC, 21 under Supreme Court and another 21 at NGT.From land disputes and PILs to fee disputes, the civic body is struggling to get any work done around them.

A review meeting headed by the GHMC commissioner DS Lokesh Kumar was held recently and noticed that counters were pending to be filed in several of these cases.
Sources said that several developmental works have been halted due to stay orders put forth by the courts several years ago.
“Some of them are pending for 25 years or more. Many of them are related to encroachment of government lands and once evicted, they would stake their claim on the land,” a senior official said.
The second highest litigations that GHMC deals with include trade license fee disputes and the pendency rate amongst these cases has resulted in severe loss to the exchequer.
The GHMC commissioner, after reviewing the cases, ensured that counters were filed in over 5,000 cases. The department-wise breakup of the data shows that majority of cases are linked with the town planning department, followed by the health & sanitation, engineering, advertisement, revenue and land acquisition wings.
A substantial amount of contempt of court cases is also pending and GHMC has been responsible for the delay as they have failed to file counters for many years now.
Officials said that there are lawyers who argue these cases on behalf of GHMC and get paid 15,000 per month and 5,000 per case for the high court lawyers.
When it comes to Supreme Court cases, lawyers charge their own fees. However, GHMC is now keen on vacating stay orders in various land acquisition and other property disputes to complete long-pending projects.