Decision to abolish State Administrative Tribunal lacks merit: Bar association

A day after the Himachal Pradesh Cabinet decided to abolish the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT), the Mandi District Bar Association (DBA) termed the decision "hasty and without any merit".

It asked Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to review the decision, claiming that views of the stakeholders were never taken into account.

The move would hit government employees of Mandi, Kullu, Lahaul-Spiti, Bilaspur and Hamirpur districts, whose service matters were being heard at Mandi, said DBA president Dinesh Sharma, adding that now they would have to go to Shimla for it.

The DBA also decided to meet the CM on this issue before deciding further course of action.

Meanwhile, in separate statements, Himachal Congress president Kuldeep Singh Rathore and former party chief Sukhwinder Sukhu termed the move unfortunate.

They said the tribunal helped employees get "early and low cost justice".

Calling the decision undemocratic, Rahtore said the government should have tried to find ways to make it more viable, instead of deciding to abolish it.

Bar Council of India member Desh Raj Sharma too termed the decision against the spirit of law.

The president of the Mandi-based central zone of the tribunal, SP Parmar, said the government had deprived thousands of employees of getting justice on their doorstep.

The CM was wrongly commenting on its functioning as there was no SAT decision that was set aside by the higher court on the ground that it was against the law, he said, claiming that the decided was taken to please BJP ministers and workers as most transfer orders approved on their behalf could not mature as these were against existing provisions of law.