CESTAT Saved Just In Time
EXTRACTS from DDT 2821 06 04 2016,
CESTAT Needs a Regular President - Immediately:
PRESIDENT of the Tribunal Justice Goda Raghuram retired on 3rd March 2016 and since then, there is no President and the work in CESTAT has virtually come to a standstill or will soon.
As per Section 129C(1), The powers and functions of the Appellate Tribunal may be exercised and discharged by Benches constituted by the President from amongst the members thereof.
As per Section 129(5), A Vice-President shall exercise such of the powers and perform such of the functions of the President as may be delegated to him by the President by a general or special order in writing.
Now there is a sort of constitutional crisis in the CESTAT.
Only the President can constitute the Benches (Roster). A Vice-President can exercise such powers as may be delegated by the President. There is no Vice-President for the Tribunal and of course as of now no President. So there is nobody to constitute the benches. Some new Members have joined but they cannot sit in the Benches in the absence of a roster by the President. Only those Benches constituted by Justice Raghuram before his retirement can function.
A sad state for a tribunal with over a lakh of cases pending to see Members sitting idle for want of a roster and a President.
The Government knew three years ago that Justice Raghuram would retire in March 2016. Couldn't they find a successor much before his retirement? In fact, it would be better to appoint the prospective President as Vice-President three months before the retirement of the President; allow him to have a feel of the Tribunal and then he can take over when the President retires.
Justice Raghuram had issued Rosters for various Benches (and Members) till 29th April 2016. So after 29th April, CESTAT was to virtually stop functioning as Roster could not be issued as there is no President and Benches could not be constituted as there would be no rosters. The Title of this piece would have been, “CESTAT Closed”.
Government had declared Mr. MV Ravindran, Member (Judicial) as Head of the Department by an Order dated 31.03.2016. But he is not President proper and he had no powers to issue the Roster.
The Government came to the rescue of CESTAT and issued an order dated 29.04.2016, with the approval of the Finance Minister authorizing Mr. Ravindran to prepare roster beyond 29.04.2016, till the joining of the new President.
The order reads as,
Shri M V Ravindran Member(Judicial) Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, who had been designated as HoD, CESTAT vide order F.NoA12026/02/2011-AdlC(CESTAT) dated 31.03.2016, is hereby authorized to prepare rosters for re-assigning the bench matters to the Members beyond 29.04.16 till the joining of new President CESTAT or until further orders, for smooth functioning of the tribunal.
This issues with the approval of Finance Minister.
A major crisis has been averted and all CESTAT Benches can function normally from Monday. Mr. Ravindran flew down to Delhi (from Mumbai where he is posted) on Saturday (30th April) and issued the roster for all the Benches. Now, even the newly appointed Technical Members who were sitting idle for want of a roster can be assigned to Benches and are in fact assigned.
While the last minute efforts of the government to salvage the CESTAT are laudable, it is surprising that they did not visualize this situation earlier and allowed so much confusion to be created and kept Members idle.
The Government should seriously consider suitably amending the Customs Act to avert such damaging situations in future. They can do it now itself while getting the Finance Bill 2016 enacted.