Taking note of tribunals being starved of manpower and infrastructure for years, the Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed concern over the large number of vacancies in important tribunals and asked the Centre to fill them up in two weeks.

A constitution bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices N V Ramana, D Y Chandrachud, Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna also asked the Centre why it had not yet implemented the SC’s 1997 judgment advising the government to bring tribunals under the ministry of law and justice.

“There cannot be any manner of doubt that to ensure the efficient functioning and to streamline the working of tribunals, they should be brought under one agency, as already felt and observed by this court in L Chandra Kumar judgment (of 1997). The court would like to have benefit of the Centre’s view by means of an affidavit of the competent authority to be filed within two weeks from today,” the bench ordered.

The court said the alarming vacancy position in important tribunals like Central Administrative Tribunal, Intellectual Property Appellate Board, Armed Forces Tribunal, National Green Tribunal and the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal required urgent attention and assured that the CJI’s nominee judges heading selection committees would expeditiously make recommendations to fill the posts.

“Such recommendations which have already been made by the search-cum-selection committee, as in the case of National Company Law Tribunal and National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, should be immediately implemented by making appointments within two weeks and the result thereof be placed before the court through an affidavit of the competent authority,” it ordered.

While hearing arguments on the mismanagement of tribunals, the CJI said, “The whole exercise is to bring uniformity in the service condition of members and chairpersons of tribunals to the extent possible and maintain the judicial character and independence of the tribunals.”

Justice Ramana talked about an interesting incident arising from the relaxation of eligibility criteria for lawyers to apply for the post of members of tribunals. “For 10 posts for a tribunal, last year the CJI interviewed some 300 persons and I interviewed some 400 others this year. We cannot put stringent eligibility criteria as someone will go to high court and get a stay on recruitment and take the entire process for a ride. One of the applicants I interviewed owned a provision store and was also enrolled as an advocate for the last 30 years, which made him eligible to apply,” he said.

Justice Chandrachud said tribunals decide issues which are of extreme importance to the country. In the UK, there is a separate recruitment process for tribunals and it could be tried in India, he said. #casansaar (Source - Times of India)