The Hindu : KAT closure move may hit aggrieved State employees

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 25, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka

KAT closure move may hit aggrieved State employees

By Anil Sastry

BANGALORE OCT. 24. The decision of the State Government to wind up the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT) is seen as a move to deny the Government employees an avenue to seek quick, affordable, and easy justice.

With a Administrative Member post lying vacant since October 12 after B.Eswarappa retired, the KAT is now functioning with the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman (both from the judicial side), and an Administrative Member.

The KAT, established in 1986 under the Administrative Tribunals' Act, 1985, has so far disposed of 1,01,399 applications out of 1,19,758 filed.

In fact, the Act was the vision of the late Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, to give relief to Government employees from long-drawn litigation on their service conditions.

While a majority of the Government employees and advocates favoured continuation of the tribunal, others argued that there was no need for the KAT as the High Court could cater to service-related litigation.

They pointed out that the KAT had become a rehabilitation centre for judges and administrative officers.

However, going by the number of applications disposed of by the KAT and the number of decisions challenged before the High Court, it is clear that the tribunal has been serving the purpose for which it was established.

Between 1997 and 2002, the KAT disposed of 24,715 applications and only 849 writ petitions (that is a mere 3.5 per cent) were filed before the High Court challenging the decision of the KAT during that period.

This proved that a majority of the KAT decisions had attained an element of finality.

When the KAT was formed in 1986, thousands of writ petitions relating to service matters of Government servants were pending before the High Court for over a decade.

All those petitions were transferred to the KAT.

Another advantage for the litigants with regard to the KAT is that there is no need for translating documents and annexure to the application to English from Kannada.

The Centre had constituted the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for its employees with a number of Benches, including one in Bangalore.

Despite the number of applications filed before the CAT is less when compared with KAT, the Centre had no proposal to wind up CAT.

Advocates suggested that the State Government could have widened the jurisdiction of the KAT by covering State Government autonomous bodies, boards and corporations.

This would have reduced the number of cases pending and filed before the High Court.

The feeling that the KAT had become a white elephant for the State Government appears to be misplaced.

The amount spent on it is Rs. 142 lakh in 1998-99, Rs. 161 lakh in 1999-2000, Rs. 185 lakh in 2000-01, and Rs. 214 lakh in 2001-02.

It includes an annual rent of about Rs. 56 lakhs paid to the Bangalore Development Authority, in whose commercial complex the KAT is housed.

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