The city government on Tuesday told the Delhi High Court that the Online Single Window System (OSWS) portal for seamless processing of payment of professional fees to empanelled lawyers will be made operational within two weeks.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora was also informed by the Delhi government counsel that the issue of fees revision of professionals who are appointed as standing counsel of various authorities here, including cap on number of appearances, is pending consideration before the Delhi law minister.
The bench directed the law minister to expeditiously decide the issue of fees revision and listed the matter for further hearing on April 8 while asking the counsel for the Central government to take instructions on the issue.
The court was hearing a petition ventilating grievances about non-payment of professional fee or retainership fee bills of empanelled lawyers outstanding for a long time.
Delhi government’s standing counsel Santosh Kumar Tripathi and lawyer Arun Panwar informed the court that the new OSWS portal for payment of professionals’ fees shall be made operational within two weeks.
The counsel said it took eight years for the authorities to activate the online system which has to be a transparent process.
Petitioner and advocate Piyush Gupta has sought a court’s direction to the authorities for clearance of bills of government counsels engaged with the Delhi government, the Centre and municipal bodies.
The plea claimed that the bills have been kept pending for long and despite various representations made by the lawyers, the authorities have not cleared the bills.
The high court had earlier noted that in August 2020, it directed the authorities to clear the pending bills of standing counsel but it was not done.
