CESTAT - No S.C/S.T Reservation in appointment of CESTAT Members
A Commissioner of Central Excise belonging to a Scheduled Caste applied for the post of Member of CESTAT and was not selected and he approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for a direction that he should have been considered for the job under the reserved category.
The CAT rejected his plea and observed that the selection was done by a Committee chaired by a Sitting Judge of the Supreme Court of India and that there was no reservation policy made applicable to the appointments to CESTAT. The CAT has also noted that the applicant participated in the selection process without any protest or demur and thereby took his chance to partake the selection process with full knowledge that his candidature was not being considered against any reserved post. Merely because, the Petitioner failed to get selected, he cannot turn around and challenge the selection process.
The Commissioner by now retired took the matter to the High Court.
The High Court last week in a judgement, found no infirmity in the CAT order to warrant interference by the High Court.
In recent times there has been some debate on reservation of post in the higher judiciary and there was lot of action in the judicial corridors of Tamil Nadu. Even the immediate past Chief Justice of India, Justice Sathasivam has advocated some sort of reservation for SC/ST/OBC in appointments to the high courts and the Supreme Court.
Even though there is no official reservation as such, there is some unwritten, informal reservation by which a few selected judges belong to the categories of SC/ST/OBC/minorities/women. One of the longest serving Chief Justices of India was from the SC community.
CESTAT, in its more than three decades of existence, had hardly two or three Members from the SC/ST communities. But then nobody looked at it that way. Caste or religion was never a factor in the CESTAT. In fact we had a Muslim Member who wrote in a judgement, The mere entry ‘Prasad' or ‘Prasadam' which is purely a religious offering made to the deity cannot be brought within the ambit of the Act. The mere specification in the tariff schedule will not make the item goods and exigible; merely because the devotee has purchased it from the temple precincts it cannot be considered as an exigible commodity. The item may be goods before they are taken for presentation to the deity and at that stage the excisability of the product could be considered. The said item before presentation to the deity would not be ‘Prasad' or ‘Prasadam' but it would be known in the stage in which it is. Therefore, the item, after it is presented to the deity by the temple authorities and offered to devotees on charges, cannot be considered as ‘goods'.
Obviously not many officers belonging to these communities apply for these jobs and so not many get selected.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes had recommended a 50% reservation in all vacancies in the Supreme Court and High Courts till 22.5% reservation is achieved for SC/ST.
It had also recommended that for appointments to Tribunals, suitable provision has to be made for reservation for SC/ST candidates.
Any way as of now, there is no reservation and the disappointed Commissioner may not go to the Supreme Court as even if he had been appointed a Member of the CESTAT, he would have retired next month even from the CESTAT!