Delhi High Court asks Centre on steps taken to fill CESTAT vacancies

The Delhi High Court has issued notice on a petition that had challenged an order of the Central Government authorizing a judicial member of the Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal to prepare rosters for all the CESTAT Benches in India..Last week, Justices Dr. S Muralidhar and Vibhu Bakhru directed the Government to file a reply limited to the extent of steps taken by them to fill up the vacancies of President and Vice President of the tribunal..The petition, filed by M/S Simplex Infrastructures Ltd, has assailed an order of April 29 issued by the Central Government which authorized one of the CESTAT judicial members, who was neither the President or Vice-President of the CESTAT, to prepare the roster of CESTAT benches across India..The plea had also stated that any hearing before a Bench, constituted pursuant to the said order would amount to “Corum Non Judice” since decisions/orders passed by CESTAT based on a legally untenable allotment of cases would be vulnerable to be struck down for being bad in law on appeals by the department..However when the case came up for hearing, the Bench did not seem convinced. Justice Muralidhar said that without an interim arrangement, work at CESTAT would come to a standstill..‘Then we’ll be hearing petitions here on how the tribunal work has become stagnant’, he added..When the Petitioner, represented by Advaita Legal’s Sujit Ghosh pointed out that one of their cases will be affected if it was heard by a Bench constituted pursuant to the order, the Court refused to pass any interim orders to that effect. It added that till the next date of hearing, cases will be heard as per the roster already prepared..The case will now be heard on May 30..Read the order below.