Will Centre abolish tribunals, asks Supreme Court

The proposed bid to slash the number of tribunals on Tuesday caught the attention of the Supreme Court which cited media reports and asked whether the Centre was planning to abolish quasi-judicial panels. The NDA government has recently proposed to bring a law to slash the number of tribunals from present 36 to 18.

“Is the government going to abolish the tribunals? The media reports say so,” a bench of Justices M B Lokur and Deepak Gupta asked Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who was representing Maharashtra government in an appeal filed against an order of the National Green Tribunal.

“Time has come that such gimmicks should be stopped. They (government) should rather wind up the Tribunals. We should not accept these changes and we need to stress that environment is part of the Article 21 of the constitution,” said MC Mehta, senior advocate.

“Some of the provisions in the rules are drastic and draconian, such as the one regarding removal of the NGT chairperson. This is an attack not only on NGT but also other Tribunals, this is a death knell for all Tribunals,” said senior advocate Sanjay Parikh.

Last month, the NDA-led government had published the Tribunal, Appellate Tribunal and other Authorities …read more