ITAT appointments must be transparent, eligibility criteria must attract Senior lawyers: CJI BR Gavai

Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai on Wednesday said that the appointments to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) must remain transparent..The credibility of a tribunal fundamentally relies on public confidence that its members are selected according to objective standards rather than transient administrative convenience, the CJI underscored. “Tax adjudication, which frequently involves evolving accounting standards and complex commercial facts, benefits from continuity. Tenure arrangements should therefore allow sufficient time for the evelopment of adjudicatory expertise and preservation of institutional memory. Thus, the way forward, in my view, must be comprehensive,” he said. Further, he said that the eligibility criteria for appointments to ITAT should be adapted to attract senior practitioners at a point in their careers where their experience can be effectively applied, rather than deferring appointments till the very end of their professional lives. “Equally, we must invest decisively in systematic capacity-building within the Tribunal. A structured programme of induction training, continuing judicial education, and focused modules on various aspects, alongside periodic workshops that bring together Members, officers, and the Bar to discuss practical problems of proof, procedure, and principled reasoning, will reduce the inconsistency of outcomes,” he said. .CJI Gavai was speaking at a symposium on ‘Income Tax Appellate Tribunal -- Role, Challenges and Way Forward’ and a felicitation ceremony organised for him by the ITAT. .The event was also attended by Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya who highlighted the complicated nature of the Indian tax law. “Every tax practitioner today understands the pain of going through the statutory provisions with one provision running into multiple pages... At times, one wonders if understanding the law of taxation is more taxing than the tax burden itself,” Justice Upadhyaya said. He stated that as India enters the 79th year of its independence, a question that must be asked is whether the country’s taxation framework inspires fiscal discipline and the confidence of the corporate sector. “The real success of a system is the style of working at the lowest level. The working at the lowest level even today is archaic where one who generates the income is looked upon as a culprit. We need to change this outlook for a better future. We need to embrace those who contribute to the economy of the nation and one of the ways to do that would be to have a simplified legal framework for taxation,” Justice Upadhyaya opined.