Eight tribunals get short end of Finance Bill stick

NEW DELHI: The government has merged several administrative tribunals and assumed powers to appoint and remove their chiefs, triggering fears the unprecedented move will undermine the authority and independence of quasi-judicial institutions.

The Finance Bill 2017, ratified by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, also made several structural changes, including making Aadhaar numbers mandatory for tax returns, allowing companies to make bigger, anonymous political donations and capping single cash transaction at ~200,000.

But the most sweeping changes related to eight autonomous tribunals which were merged with other tribunals, and which also gave the govern- ment the power to appoint and remove the members in another 17 such bodies.

This could pose a conflict of interest in cases where the government is a litigant, critics said.

Some mergers appear incongruous. For example, the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority Appellate Tribunal was merged with the Telecom Dispute Settlements and Appellate Tribunal. The bill also laid down severance terms for the chairpersons, vice chairpersons and members of the merged tribunals: Up to three months’ pay and allowances, and it said officers will revert to their parent cadre or ministry.

The government said reducing the number of tribunals will speed up dispute resolution.