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New Delhi, Oct 25 (IANS) The Department of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Law and Justice has launched an initiative to enable digitization of the entire process of advocate fee disbursement and forms, a statement said on Saturday.
Earlier, payment of fees to advocates involved physical processing, manual verification and submission of hard copies to the pay and accounts office, which often resulted in delays and paper-intensive workflow. The Ministry of Law and Justice said the advanced e-bill module now enables end-to-end electronic processing of fee disbursements to law officers and panel advocates.
It added, “The advanced e-bill module now enables end-to-end electronic processing of fee disbursements to law officers and panel advocates, eliminating the manual paperwork and delays that characterized the earlier system.”
The Ministry of Law and Justice said it has achieved a major milestone in procedural simplification by integrating the Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS) with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS).
“This reform is enabling digitization of the entire process of advocate fee disbursement and is an important component of the government’s broader initiative of Ease of Doing Business and Digital India,” it said.
It said that with further improvements in the e-bill module, bills prepared by law officers and panel advocates on the LIMBS platform are also now seamlessly transmitted to PFMS for digital verification, clearance and payment.
The integration has made the entire process paperless – reducing processing time, enabling real-time bill tracking and eliminating human error.
Each claim generates a claim reference number (CRN), which enables administrative units to track the progress in real time. The statement said that once verified and digitally signed by the Withdrawal and Disbursement Officer (DDO), the payment is released directly to the beneficiary’s bank account through PFMS – without any physical file movement.
The Central Agency Section (CAS) of the Department of Legal Affairs implemented the e-bill module for panel advocate payments through LIMBS in February 2025, and the department is now preparing to extend this system to other litigation units, including the Delhi High Court.
A proposal to create a retainer fee module within LIMBS to cover periodic payments of law officers is also being considered for implementation.
–IANS
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