Issues & Analysis around Administrative Tribunals

The major analytical topics around administrative tribunals are as follows:

• What do we understand by the inherent “contempt power” or “contempt jurisdiction” of the CAT (Central Administrative Tribunal)? What is its relevance?
• While CAT has worked well, state administrative tribunals became redundant. What are the reasons for the same? Why some states have shut down the administrative tribunals?

Contempt Power / Contempt Jurisdiction of CAT

The constitutional provisions regarding administrative tribunals are only enabling provisions to set up tribunals. The CAT was established under Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985. Under section 17 of this act, CAT has been empowered to take action against anyone for not implementing its decisions. This is called contempt power or contempt jurisdiction and is analogous to the powers of courts under Contempt of Courts Act 1971.

The people who approach these panels are salaried employees of the government, and they need time bound effective action in matters of payment of salary, fixation of seniority, promotion, pension, medical expenses etc. which are of urgent nature for then. If the relief granted by tribunal is not implemented in time, it would become meaningless.

In service matters, there has to be time bound action — be it a promotion, payment of salary, fixation of seniority, or payment of pension or medical expenses. If the relief granted by the Tribunal is not effected in time, it may become meaningless. Here, the power of contempt works as teeth of the CAT has this is one of the reasons that CAT has performed well.

In past, there were efforts to strip the CAT of its power of contempt. However, such efforts remained fruitless. Currently CAT enjoys this power. A power of contempt keeps the decision implementation possible and thus helps employees get cheaper legal remedy within a reasonable time. The High Courts are also happy because CAT and other tribunals bring down their work load.

Losing relevance of State Administrative Tribunals

Article 323 B empowers the parliament or state legislatures to set up tribunals for matters other than those mentioned above. Many states in India have established the Tribunals. In some states, the decisions and judgments are binding upon the state Government. In some states such as Andhra Pradesh, the judgments of Tribunals are binding on the State Government unless nullified by the latter within a period of two months. In some states the Tribunals have taken away the jurisdiction of the respective high courts in service matters, while in some other states, they do not abridge or ban the jurisdiction of the High Court concerned.

As of now most state tribunals are losing relevance and some state governments are closing them down. The reason can be understood as follows:

CAT was established in 1985 and today it has 17 regular branches of which 15 operate at the principal seats of High Courts while two others at Jaipur and Lucknow. Initially the design was such that CAT was treated at par with High Courts and appeals against its decision were to be taken to only Supreme Court. However, in 1997, in L Chandrakumar case, the Supreme Court made it clear that such appeals need to be sent to High Courts only. This had far reaching implications. Firstly, it did not help to reduce the service matter burden as far as appeals in these matters are concerned. Secondly, since tribunals now served as lower than high courts, many states considered it better to abolish them because now they would be redundant. The cases also piled up (there were 32000 cases in Odisha State Tribunal before the state government closed it). Thus, the key reason was redundancy.