15 new judicial and technical members appointed for NCLT benches

The National Company Law Tribunal has appointed nine new judicial and six technical members, increasing capacity at benches overburdened by cases and capacity constraint.

Members hold positions for five-year terms or 65 years of age, whichever is earlier.

The tribunal has a total sanctioned strength of 63 members and 28 benches. Before the new appointments, the benches had 16 judicial Members and nine Technical Members across different benches to deal with matters relating to the IBC, mergers & acquisitions and operation and management matters along with company law matters.

Most of the case burden at the NCLT benches is due to the insolvency and bankruptcy matters.

The technical members appointed include retired principal chief commissioner of income tax Ashish Verma, Atul Chaturvedi, retired secretary of animal husbandry department, Anu Jagmohan, former member of central board of direct taxes and Charan Singh, former executive director of UCO bank.

The list of judicial members includes former Madras High Court judge T Krishna Valli, retired Allahabad High Court judge Vikas Kunvar Srivastav among others.

In the first phase the Ministry of Corporate Affairs had set up eleven Benches, one Principal Bench at New Delhi and ten other Benches at New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

Subsequently, benches at Cuttack, Jaipur, Kochi, Amravati, and Indore were set up.

For the appointment of members, the recommendation from a two-judge Supreme Court bench goes to the chief justice, followed by the law ministry and corporate affairs ministry and thereafter to the Prime Minister’s Office.  The final appointments are decided upon by the appointments committee of the cabinet.