Merger of CLB, COMPAT unlikely with tribunals: Official

NEW DELHI: The nation’s two primary corporate arbiters, the Company Law Board ( CLB) and Competition Appellate Tribunal ( COMPAT), are unlikely to be merged with any other tribunal as the corporate affairs ministry has expressed its unwillingness to accept a proposal from the Prime Minister’s Office to examine the possibility of combining tribunals for more uniformity and efficiency.

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has said COMPAT, which hears company appeals against Competition Commission of India orders, is not fit to be merged with any other tribunal as it deals with complex competition matters and has the backing of the Competition Act of 2002. For the CLB, the ministry has said it anyway will cease to exist once the proposed National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) becomes operational.

“We don’t see any of our tribunals fit to be merged as they are too specialised. The CLB will anyway be scrapped once the overarching body as proposed in the new companies act comes into existence,” said a senior government official, who did not wish to be named.

In a note sent to all secretaries of the Union government on February 18, the law ministry said that there was a possibility of converging some of these tribunals to avoid overlapping.

According to the note, the PMO wants all the ministries and departments to have a relook at the quasi-judicial bodies functioning under their administrative control to examine the possibility of merging them. The MCA also has to furnish the details of the number of cases filed in and disposed of by the tribunal and the funds sanctioned and spent by it in the past ten years. The proposed NCLT will subsume, in a phased manner, the Company Law Board, Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction and the Appellate Authority for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction. In addition, cases lying with company benches of the high courts will be shifted to the new body.