Supreme Court seeks response from Centre on plea to fill up vacancies at NCLT, NCLAT, asks to expedite President & Chairman's appointment

The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Central government on a plea seeking directions to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to fill up the vacancies of the chairperson of National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) and president of National National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) without any delay and to expedite the process of selection started in 2019..The plea by the National Company Law Tribunal and Appellate Tribunal Bar Association also sought directions to re-appoint the members of the tribunal whose 5-year tenure would be ending in May and June 2021.A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ravindra Bhat issued notice to the Centre and listed the matter for hearing on May 31, 2021..The Supreme Court has directed that:"Names recommended by the Selection Committee shall be finalized by the Respondents and appointments to the post of Members, NCLT shall be made forthwith. The Respondents are directed to expedite the process for filling up the remaining posts without any further delay. Re-appointment of Members of NCLT who are about to retire should be considered at the earliest.".The plea by the bar associations stated that Centre "is not even considering initiating the recruitment process for the appointment of new members in the Tribunals or to re-appoint and/or extend the term, of the existing Members who have acquired 'domain expertise' till the time such new appointments are made.".It was submitted that after the completion of term of the six members of NCLT, the existing strength of NCLT, which is already below the sanctioned limit, would be further depleted to 33 members and the acting president shall also retire, which will adversely affect the functioning of NCLT.The petitioner submitted that as on April 2021, the existing strength of the NCLT, which consists of its acting president and a total number of 38 members, out of which 17 are judicial members and 21 are technical members, is much below than the sanctioned strength of 63 members. .The tribunals have been functioning without any regular president of NCLT, for more than a year, the plea added. .It was further submitted that several selected candidates for the post of members of the NCLT have not received their appointment letters from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and due to this delay, there is a dire need to maintain the strength of members in the Tribunal..The plea also sought directions to extend the term of those members of the NCLT, who shall be completing their tenure by May and June 2021, for a period of 5 years or until they attain the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier..(Read order)