Review Cabinet Move On CAT: Lawyers

New Delhi, Feb 6 (UNI): Authorities have been petitioned to review a Cabinet move to strip the Central Administrative Tribunal of thepower to summon government officers who do not honour its judgement.

The request has been made by service lawyers practising at the CAT in petitions to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Law Minister Hans Raj Bhardwaj and Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti.

The request followed a meeting of the CAT Bar Association on Tuesday which adopted a resolution condemning the Cabinet move as 'retrograde' and violative a five year old Supreme Court judgement.

The Cabinet decision to divest the Administrative Tribunal of contempt powers was announced on January 27.

"Stiff resistance from the lawyers community all over the country may erupt on this issue if the powers of Contempt are taken away from the Tribunal," the resolution said.

The resolution saw in it a "sinister strategy" of "some of the powerful bureaucrats" to circumvent CAT orders "not to their liking." It said this was "because they expose the illegalities, arbitrariness and highhandedness of the bureaucrats against their subordinates and lower functionaries." With arrears mounting in Courts, the CAT was established under the Administrative Tribunal Act, 1985 for inexpensive and speedy redressal of the government employees grievances.

Over the past twenty years, the Tribunal awards have brought relief to "lakhs of government employees" and attained a zero level of pendency- with only 17,000 cases now before its 18 Benches all over India, the resolution said.

It said the CAT had been disposing of cases within six months of filing, making it the "fastest Court in India at present." It said the Cabinet move would make the Tribunal a "toothless" body leaving government employees seeking redressal of grievances helpless as there will be no way to implement judgements.

The lawyers held that the Cabinet decision "is also in violation" of the Supreme Court judgement by Justices A S Anand, R C Lahoti and K G Balakrishnan in the T Sudhakar Prasad v the Andhra Pradesh government case in December 2000.

The three judge Bench held that the ''contempt jurisdiction is exercised for the purpose of upholding the majesty of law and dignity of the judicial system as also of the Courts and Tribunal entrusted with the task of administering delivery of justice.

"Availability of jurisdiction to punish for contempt provides efficacy to functioning of the Judicial Forum and enables the enforcement of the orders on account of its deterrent effect on avoidance," the court had held.

Justice Anand was then Chief Justice of India, a position now held by Justice Lahoti.

Noting that all tribunals and courts are vested with the powers to punish for contempt, the Association said there is ''no reason why'' the CAT ''should be singled out, just because some of the bureaucrats think that they are above law and that no tribunal should interfere in their powers." Army's mountain warfare capability to be enhanced: Army Chief New Delhi, Feb 6 (UNI): Newly-installed Army Chief Gen J J Singh said he would strive to enhance the Indian Army's mountain warfare capability but not by downgrading any of the existing three Strike Corps.

Gen Singh also ruled out the formation of an air assault element "for the present." In an exclusive interview to UNI, he said he would ensure Indian Army's mountain warfare capability received a major boost.

"There is a need to upgrade our mountain warfare capabilities, to make them more manifest.

Thinking on this has started.

I will address the issue," he said.

There are plans to raise a Mountain Strike Corps on the pattern of the three in the plains, Army sources said.

However, the Army Chief made it clear that the increase in mountain warfare capability would not be accomplished at the expense of the existing Strike Corps.

"We need the Strike Corps, which are very flexible formations.

There is no hard and fast rule that they always have to be kept in that configuration.

Assets from one can be transferred to another when the need arises.

There is no question of this is mine and this is yours," he said.

Currently three of the Indian Army's 12 Corps formations - the Ist, IInd and the XXIst are Strike Corps, built around an Armoured Division.

Asked to comment on the findings of a strategic analyst that India could anticipate its next war to be fought in the mountains, the Army Chief expressed disagreement.

"When war comes, it could be anywhere, not only the mountains," Gen Singh said.

Considering the short-term threat of unresolved territorial and boundary disputes India faces with both China and Pakistan, a noted analyst had postulated that there were high chances that these could lead to war, with the mountains as the battlefield.

"There is a high probability (80-90 per cent) that the next war would erupt in the mountains, with a medium chance (50 to 60 per cent) it would remain confined to that region," Brig (retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, Research Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said, presenting a draft paper titled 'Army Vision 2020 - Restructuring for an Era of Strategic Uncertainty.' The Army Chief also said creation of air assault formations for the Indian Army being spoken of since the famous 'Brasstacks' exercises in the mid-1980s during Gen Sundarji's tenure was not on the current agenda.

"This does not figure in our immediate plans.

We can look at it in a general way the shape, size and configuration, the equipment and the infrastructure it will require, and whether we require such forces," he said.

"They (air assault units) are a very expensive proposition," he noted.

Underscoring the need to qualitatively enhance the force's Information Warfare capability to fight in the 'digital battlefield,' Gen Singh termed them an 'important determinant of victory in the next war' and said it was imperative to fully exploit and intermesh IW, network-centric warfare and information systems to serve as a major 'force-multiplier.' "We look forward to the time when we can transmit information from a satellite to a TV screen for our forward fighting formations, while our jawans go into battle with palmtop computers in their hands.

This will be the biggest improvement in our fighting capabilities seen since 1971," he said.

Outlining the procedural changes in this regard, he said that the Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Training & Co-ordination) had been redesignated DCOAS (Information Systems & Training) and would have another two-star officer, exclusively tasked with this responsibility, under him.

Gen Singh also spoke of the need to overhaul the Indian Army's logistic support infrastructure.

"We have to find ways to enhance the logistic support, with just enough and just in time' as the keyword to ensure an assured and responsive mechanism using multimodal systems of delivery," he said."Our logistics still has major manual content.

We must move to mechanise it," he added.