HANDBOOK ON Aw!-£ | LEGAL SYSTEM & PROCESERES : ADMINISTRATION SECTION : CONTROLLER GENERAL OF DEFENCE ACCOUNTS _- WEST BLOCK - V, R.K.PURAM, NEW DELHI-110 066. >PREFACE ‘The Defence Accounts Department is committed to rendering efficient, correct and prompt setvice to the Armed Forces. In order to translate this commitment into an everyday reality in the functioning of 962 offices at 249 locations all over the country, the Department has taken a number of steps. These include sensitizing the staff about expectations of the customers, upgrading their skills and providing prompt redressal whenever any instance of deficiency in service comes to notice. While the Department has been able to meet, by and large, exacting standards in performance of mandated functions, instances do happen when internal and external customers take legal recourse for settlement of their grievances. 2. Inthe last few years, the mumber of legal cases faced by the Department has increased significaitly. The increased litigation is not because of any decline in service delivery but due to quantum jump in Defence budget and resultant transactions handled by the Department. Increased public awareness of one’s rights and judicial activism have also contributed to rise in the number of legal eases faced by governmental organizations. As a result, the State is now pethaps the biggest litigant. Such a situation calls for certain amount of legal knowledge on the part of public officers with a view to ensuring that the interests of the Government are fully protected. 3. The education profile of the D.A.D personnel is indeed impressive. However, the number ofemployees having a formal law qualification is very small. The level of legal knowledge in the Department certainly needs to be improved. Recognizing this, the Department has made conscious efforts to familiarize its manpower with legal procedures and processes through training programmes. The numbers trained so far is, however, not commensurate with the requirement. As a result, most of the DAD offices find themselves inadequately equipped to handle legal cases. 4, The publication of this handbook is an initiative taken to upgrade legal knowledge in the Department, The handbook looks at the legal system and procedures from a layman’s point of view. ILincorporates most of the topics that our employees need to be familiar with for handling legal cases. Various Government orders & instructions for handling and monitoring legal cases have also been included. F 5. It must be added here that this is entirely an in-house effort of the Administration Section of the Headquarters office. The information set out in this publication has been borrowed from various sources, In this regard, the study material on the subject prepared by the Institute of Judicial Training & Research, Lucknow, Institute of Secretarial Training & Management, New Delhi and that available on various Internet sites has been consulted. Suggestions for improving the content and presentation of this publication are welcome.