NEW DELHI: A petition filed by a technical member of the NCLT challenging the appointment of Bachu Venkat Balaram Das as acting chief justice was frivolous in view of the Center appointing a former Supreme Court judge to the post of chief justice, the Delhi High Court said on Thursday.
A bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and O B Shukla noted that the Center had approved the appointment of Justice Anupinder Singh Grewal, a former judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, as Chief Justice of the National Company Law Tribunal.
“However, this writ petition dealing with the post of acting Chairman of NCLT has become frivolous,” the bench said while closing the proceedings on the petition filed by Kushalendra Kumar Singh.
On April 29, the Center notified the appointment of Justice Grewal as Chairman of NCLT for a period of five years from the date of his assumption of charge or till he attains the age of 67 years, whichever is earlier.
In the Supreme Court, Singh asserted that the law provides for the appointment of the most senior member, irrespective of being a judicial or technical member, as acting president of the court, and said that since he was appointed as a member of the court earlier, Das could not have been appointed acting president.
The petitioner had first approached the Supreme Court in March and claimed that based on his joining date, he was the most senior member after the former president who retired on March 16.
Since there are no rules governing seniority among members, seniority has to be determined on the basis of date of joining, and since Das joined the court two weeks after the petitioner was appointed, the petitioner was senior to him, his affidavit said.
The petitioner was appointed as a technical member on October 1, 2021. Das, who became a judicial member on October 18, 2021, was appointed as the acting president on March 17.
The petitioner later withdrew this petition on April 1 to address the Central Administrative Court instead.
The petitioner then filed the present petition after the Committee against Torture said it had no jurisdiction in the case.
In its reply to the earlier petition, the Center said that Das has been considered for additional charge as acting chief of the NCLT following an “agreement” to appoint the highest-ranking judiciary to the post.
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