Punjab & Haryana HC lawyers on indefinite strike against Haryana tribunal

Source: theprint.in

Chandigarh: Lawyers of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on an indefinite strike against Haryana constituting a state administrative tribunal to adjudicate service-related matters, will take a call on their next course of action Monday. 

The general body of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association met Friday and after a two-hour-long deliberation had decided unanimously to continue with the strike.

“The general house will meet again on Monday to decide the further course of action,” said D.P.S. Randhawa, president, Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association.

The lawyers are against the Haryana Administrative Tribunal, meant for cases involving government employees, as they allege it will ‘nibble’ away at the high court’s jurisdiction, lengthen the litigation process and could end up favouring the government. 

Their strike was an immediate reaction to the high court Thursday declining to hear cases that would now fall in the purview of the tribunal.

The Haryana Administrative Tribunal was only notified by the Modi government in the central gazette Wednesday.

The lawyers are now demanding withdrawal of the notification that led to the constitution of the tribunal.

‘Added burden for lawyers, litigants’ 

The lawyers aired their grievances during the two-hour meeting Friday.   

Senior advocate R.K. Malik pointed out that there was a move to set up the tribunal in Karnal (constituency of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar) and that it would not be possible for lawyers and litigants to travel to Karnal for service matters.

Senior advocate Anupam Gupta condemned the move as an attack on the high court and its constitutional power of judicial review. He said retired high court judges, set to be appointed to the tribunal, are not half as independent and effective as serving high court judges. He added that political and bureaucratic leadership resents increasing judicial interference in service matters and the tribunal had been deliberately created to “nibble away” at the high court’s jurisdiction. 

He further said it would have been appropriate if the chief justice of the high court in addition to the bar had convened a meeting of the “full court” on the administrative side to review the move.

Advocate Rajiv Godara said in cases challenging recruitments by the government, a tribunal will by definition favour the government as its chairperson and members are government appointees. “The accountability of the government will be diluted through the tribunal,” he said.

“The creation of the state administrative tribunal is nothing but a waste of time and money for the litigants,” senior advocate Rajiv Atma Ram, a leading service lawyer in the high court, told ThePrint. “Even after a matter has been decided by the tribunal the side that loses will come to the high court in appeal. This only adds a step in the litigation process.”

He added that in case the tribunals are set up outside Chandigarh the lawyers practicing in the city would be adversely affected.

The tribunal

The Manohal Lal Khattar-led BJP government had decided to set up the tribunal in 2015. The Haryana State Administrative Tribunal (Procedure) Rules, 2017, was approved by the cabinet in January last year. The cabinet had noted that such a tribunal would lead to quicker redressal of employees’ grievances or service matters and to reduce the pendency of cases before the high court.

Once it received the Centre’s notification Wednesday the government ordered retired judge Sneh Prashar to take over as the chairperson of the Tribunal for five years.

The tribunal will have one chairperson and two members. Although the decision to set up a tribunal was taken by the Haryana government in June 2015, the process got delayed pending clarity regarding the appointment of the chairperson. 

Sources add that Haryana government wanted to have the power to appoint the chairperson of the tribunal while 1985 Administrative Tribunals Act has empowered the chief justice of the high court to nominate a chairperson to be approved by the governor.

The move, however, comes when the BJP government in Himachal Pradesh recently abolished its state administrative tribunal, which had been running in the state since 2014.

On Friday the government of India issued a notification abolishing the Himachal Pradesh administrative tribunal. 

But such state administrative tribunals already exist in Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka.