TO ENSURE INDEPENDENCE, THE
ARMED FORCES TRIBUNAL NOT TO FUNCTION UNDER THE DEFENCE MINISTRY, AND TO BE
BROUGHT UNDER THE AMBIT OF THE LAW MINISTRY INSTEAD :
Judgement by High Court in ‘NAVDEEP
SINGH VS UNION OF INDIA’
In a landmark judgement
which is bound to go a long way in establishing the independence of judicial
functioning in India and bringing cheer to the champions of separation of
judiciary from the executive, the Punjab Haryana High Court has directed that
the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) be brought under the control of Ministry of Law
and Justice rather than the Ministry of Defence as is the case at present. The
directions, made available today, came in a PIL filed by Maj Navdeep Singh, the
former and founder President of the AFT Bar Association at Chandigarh.
The Petition had pointed
out that the Supreme Court had already held that Tribunals could not be made
dependent on sponsoring or parent Ministries and to ensure their independence
they could only be supervised by the Law Ministry. It had been averred that all
orders by the AFT were to be passed against the Defence Ministry and the same
Ministry had been made the parent controlling Ministry of the Tribunal wielding
all pervasive control over the AFT including appointments, funding, rule-making
and infrastructure, thereby making it seem more of an extension of the State
rather than an independent judicial body. The Petition also pointed out that
non-appointment of Judicial Members after their retirements had resulted in
absolute absence of judicial remedy to serving and retired personnel at some
places. The Chandigarh Bench, having the largest jurisdiction of five states
was also partially functional with only one judicial member appointed out of
three.
The Petition had sought
provisioning of proper infrastructure, accommodation and courtesy to the
institution of AFT and its members. It had been pointed out that though the
Tribunal had to perform criminal appellate functions, there was no
representative of the Police in the premises. The Petition also questioned the
logic of having two serving career bureaucrats on the selection committee
examining the suitability of serving or retired High Court Judges to be
appointed to the AFT who rank much higher in the warrant of precedence and
protocol. Non-provisioning of official accommodation to Judicial and
Administrative Members as provided by rules was also brought to the notice of
the High Court.
Giving directions to the
government, the High Court has directed that after bringing the Tribunal under
the purview of the Law Ministry, suitable amendments in the selection committee
can also be carried out. The court has also hoped that all vacancies of
judicial members would be filled up in the near future. The court has directed
that immediate steps be taken to give effect to its directions.
While giving directions,
the High Court has relied upon earlier judgements of the Supreme Court in which
it has been observed that Tribunals in India have not yet achieved full
independence and unless wide ranging reforms are carried out, Tribunals would
not be considered independent. The Court has also observed that the idea behind
setting up of the AFT and also the reason behind passing of the AFT Act was
‘independence’ and that since the function of the Tribunal is purely judicial and
adjudicatory, keeping in view the doctrine of separation of powers inherently
ingrained in our Constitutional System, the Government per se ideally should
not have a say in the functioning of the AFT.
No comments:
Post a Comment