You can’t pick and choose: Apex court to centre on tribunal members’ selection

The Centre cannot selectively pick names for specialised tribunals from whole lists prepared by selection panels headed by SC judges, the Supreme Court has said. It demanded to know when the appointments would be completed.

“The selection panel recommended 9 judicial members and 10 technical members. Some were appointed and others kept waiting. We cannot ignore selected candidates and go to wait-list. What type of selection and appointment is this,” Chief Justice of India NV Ramana asked attorney general KK Venugopal, who represented the Modi government. The same thing has happened with ITAT members, the CJI said. “Forty-three were recommended but 13 appointed. On what basis have they been selected?”

The AG contended that the Centre had the power not to accept recommendations. However, the CJI rejected the contention. “You can’t say that. We function under a Constitution.” The CJI reiterated his unhappiness over the manner and pace of the appointments despite recommendations. “We interviewed 530 candidates for judicial members and 400 plus for technical members in NCLAT. Out of this, only eight each were cleared. We travelled during the pandemic and wasted time,” the CJI said, wondering about the sanctity of the recommendations.


The AG said recommendations were not pending for six tribunals. He sought two more weeks to allow the government to consider the names, except those accused of corruption. Ramana, heading a three-judge bench, granted the government time to take whatever action it wanted in the extended time, but warned the SC would step in to complete the process otherwise. The CJI had given such a warning at the last hearing too. He said that SC may appoint members to fill vacancies to tribunals crippled without heads and enough members. Tribunals, including TDSAT, NCLT, NCLAT, NGT and consumer commissions are either headless or functioning at half strength.

Specialised tribunals were constituted to deal easily with cases related to their respective domains and reduce the time and load off high courts. With tribunals non-functional, HCs have had to step in recently as SC’s recommendations to fill up vacancies have been followed only in fits and starts by the Centre under court pressure.

Senior advocate Arvind Datar also accused the Centre of abruptly ending the tenures of some current holders of posts to replace them with names from the latest list of recommendations. The bench while granting two more weeks to the government also issued notices on pleas filed by the Madras HC Bar Association and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh against the Tribunals Act recently enacted by Parliament which overturns provisions struck down by the SC. The provisions relate to service conditions, tenure of service and qualifications for becoming a judicial member of a tribunal.