Govt to restructure tribunals, autonomous organisations

In a massive restructuring exercise, the Centre may bring down to less than half the number of 36 existing tribunals and revamp over 680 organisations, including public sector undertakings under its control.
The move is based on recommendations of a Committee of Secretaries which has Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi as its members, official sources said.
The committee has proposed reduction of the number of tribunals from 36 to 17 and has sought reduction or restructuring of as many as 685 autonomous bodies or institutions during this year, they said.
"The idea is to take a relook at the functioning of various such bodies in order to ensure minimum government maximum governance," Union Minister Jitendra Singh told PTI today.

He said there are tribunals which have less number of cases and the government may look into the possibility of merging two tribunals or shutting down a few.
There are tribunals for settling various administrative and tax-related disputes, including Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT) and Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), among others.

Besides these there are scores of public sector undertakings and various autonomous organisations under the central government's jurisdiction.
Addressing a meeting of Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT)yesterday to review the action plan for the current year,Singh had said the government plans to strike down irrelevant laws by repealing or revoking more than a thousand existing ones.

"The government will abolish several of the existing laws which have ceased to be relevant in the present date and time," he had said.
Noting that 1053 laws are pending for Parliament's approval to be repealed, Singh had said about 649 laws have been sent and circulated among ministries and states for comments and the process of repealing or revoking these will be carried forward after obtaining their feedback.
The move will add to ease of doing business and ensure more transparent governance, he had said.
A mechanism will also be worked out wherein the information already available on the official websites or official portals is not to be asked for through RTIs, in order to reduce the pendency and workload accruing from such queries, Singh had said.

While the work on simplified one-page form and self- attestation of certificates has already begun, the DoPT is also working out the feasibility of issuing residence or domicile certificates as well as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Classe certificates to children by the time they reach class 5, he said.