New Delhi, Dec 6 (PTI) The Delhi High Court has asked the Centre to consider on “priority” the option of deputing a judicial member from the subordinate judiciary as a stop-gap arrangement in Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) here till appointments are made to fill up the vacancies.
The high court said considering the fact that there is no judicial member presently occupying any of the DRTs in Delhi and even Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunals (DRAT) are headless, the Union of India should consider this option on priority.
“We have put it to Mr. Ravi Prakash (Central government standing counsel) that another option available to the respondent no.1 (Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance) is to, as a stop-gap arrangement, that is, till the appointments are made in pursuance of the selection process is undertaken, request the High Court to depute a judicial member from the subordinate judiciary,” a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said.
The bench added, “There are past precedents in this regard, however, in the past, the posts were advertised against which judicial member of the subordinate judiciary had applied to serve in the DRTs on deputation.” The court asked the authorities to explore this option as a stop-gap arrangement, till appointments are made through the selection process which is underway, and directed it to file a status report before the next date of hearing on December 15.
The bench was hearing a plea raising the issue of delay in disposal of high-value recovery cases pending before the DRTs. The court had earlier directed the authorities to constitute a committee to examine the situation.
The Centre’s counsel submitted that in light of a judgement of the Kerala High Court, it would not be possible for the Union of India to authorise the presiding officers of the DRTs situated in another jurisdictional State to attend to cases pending before the DRTs in Delhi.
The counsel said the Central government has sought information from several other tribunals if they could spare judicial members to man the DRTs in Delhi.
However, no positive response has been received and the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Delhi has refused on the ground that they are themselves short of judicial members to man their tribunal, he said.PTI SKV SKV RKS RKS
