The Delhi High Court has come down heavily on the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for passing "innocuous directions" to a litigation without issuing notices to the opposite party saying that it was violative of the principle of natural justice.
"Howsoever strong a case may appear to be, no adjudicatory system can countenance a matter to be disposed of without even putting a notice to opposite party.
"This is the minimum requirement of principle of natural justice, and who else other than CAT would be bound to observe the same for the reason, except in cases of idle formalities; violation of a principle of natural justice is treated as an injury by itself not requiring any further injury to be shown or to be proved," a bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Veena Birbal said.
The court's observations came in a verdict by which it set aside a CAT order and allowed the plea of the Centre.
"We are noticing that the so-called innocuous directions issued by the tribunal that either the original application be treated as a representation and a reasoned decision taken, or a direction that the representations already made, be decided with reasons, gives birth to an ostensible fresh cause of action," it said.
"We direct that a copy of this decision be sent to the registrar of the CAT who shall circulate the same to all members of the tribunal, and it is hoped and expected that in future, no bench of the CAT disposes of original application without notice to the respondents."
Earlier, the CAT, without issuing notices to the Centre and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), had asked them to "decide expeditiously" a joint plea, filed in 2011, of LDC clerks K K Dawar and Shyam Sunder Lal regarding a list of promotions prepared in 1993.
Dawar and Lal, who got promotions as UDCs in 1995 and 1996 respectively, claimed that if DoPT would have taken into account the fact of 27 vacancies, then, they would have been promoted in 1993 itself.
