The controversy over the Finance Bill, 2017 , being passed as a money bill may have died down, but questions about the legality of the merger of several tribunals remain alive. The Bill included amendments to legislation on multiple subjects, in an attempt to rationalise the functioning of multiple tribunals.
As a result, what used to be 26 tribunals are now down to 19. For instance, the Competition Appellate Tribunal will be merged with the National Company Law Tribunal, while Telecom Dispute Appellate Tribunal will also do the work of the Cyber Law Appellate Tribunal and the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority Appellate Tribunal. Similarly, the tribunal relating to the Employees’ Provident Fund will be subsumed in the Industrial Tribunal.
This rationalisation, however, has raised questions about the independence of these adjudicatory bodies. This is because, henceforth, the qualifications, tenure, conditions of service, removal and emoluments of the chairpersons and members of these tribunals will all be under the control of the Centre, thanks to an omnibus provision under Section 184 of the Finance Act, 2017.
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The Madras Bar Association has challenged in the Madras High Court the validity of these amendments contending that the independence of these tribunals, before which the Centre is an interested party in most matters, is severely undermined. Besides questioning how adjudicatory bodies under different laws can be abolished by a money bill, the petition also assails the Centre taking over the entire process of removing the presiding officers. In particular, the government, it says, has given the go-by to several salutary principles laid down by the Supreme Court in 2014 to secure the independence of tribunals such as a tenure of at least five years and a selection process that requires the substantive involvement of the judiciary. A similar petition has been filed in Gujarat High Court.
It is interesting that after the Finance Bill was passed, an earlier 2014 Bill that sought to bring uniformity in the service conditions of the presiding officers and members of various tribunals and authorities was given up. This Bill was even studied by a parliamentary committee, which suggested improvements in its 2015 report.
The Madras Bar Association has successfully challenged some provisions relating to the National Company Law Tribunal as well as the National Taxation Tribunal Act in the past. The reconstitution of the tribunals will be determined by the outcome of the legal challenge. The essential question is whether the doctrine of separation of powers has been violated and the independence of judicial bodies compromised by the Finance Act, which empowers the Centre to fix as well as alter the service conditions of judicial officers manning key adjudicatory bodies.
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