THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Lack of adequate infrastructure and flurry of cases pose big hurdles for the proper functioning of the Kerala Administrative Tribunal (KAT) established for the easy settlement of service-related cases of State Government employees.Till now, 963 cases, which had been pending in the High Court, were transferred to the KAT. Adding to this, last year only 19 cases were filed with the KAT, after it started functioning on December 22, 2011. This year, till January 13, 62 cases were filed.“There are 14,000 service-related cases of State Government employees pending in the Kerala High Court according to the information collected through the Right to Information Act, which would transfer cases to the tribunal step by step as decided at the time of its establishment,” sources said.But lack of judicial members along with that of adequate staff stand in the way of the smooth functioning of the tribunal which was established following a decision of the former LDF Government. Though it was decided by the selection committee chaired by the then Chief Justice Chelameswar to appoint two judicial members other than the Chairman, at present the Chairman is the only judicial member in the tribunal.“A judicial and an administrative member are needed to settle a case. With only one judicial member, it is difficult to settle cases in a speedy way as intended when the tribunal was set up,” sources said.Two PILs had been filed in the High Court, one by the NGO Union and another by a few lawyers to reinstate the judicial members selected by the committee citing that government cannot change the decision of the selection committee. Their argument was that the UDF Government did not appoint the judicial members alleging that they were Left nominees.However, KAT is expecting a favourable order on that PIL.“Let the order come. I will not make any comments since I am not supposed to,” said KAT Chairman Justice K Balakrishnan Nair. Lack of adequate staff also pose a hindrance for the functioning of KAT. The decision of the selection committee was to constitute three Benches for the tribunal, one in Ernakulam and the rest in Thiruvananthapuram with three judicial and three administrative members. Till now, only two administrative members were appointed who hear cases on alternate days with the Chairman. Only after appointing the rest of the members, two more Benches could be constituted. The staff strength was decided as 110 of which two-third was for the Thiruvananthapuram Bench and the rest for the Ernakulam Bench. But only 20 staff were appointed here and none in Ernakulam.The slow pace of procedures to appoint members and staff hit the functioning of the tribunal which questions the very purpose of its establishment.
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