Armed Forces Tribunal planning circuit benches

Completing its first year, the Armed Forces Tribunal is now planning to set up 'circuit benches' to expand its reach and provide justice to service personnel and their families in states where it does not have a presence at the moment.

The tribunal has nine benches including the principal bench in the capital and eight regional benches in Jaipur, Guwahati, Chandigarh, Kochi, Chennai, Mumbai, Lucknow and Kolkata.

"We are contemplating setting up circuit benches and the plan is that members of the existing benches would go to the states or areas near them for a week or so in a month and take up the cases transferred from respective high courts there. In a way it would be giving justice at the doorstep," tribunal chairperson justice AK Mathur told PTI in New Delhi.

After it was launched on August 8 last year, cases pertaining to military personnel are being transferred from the respective high courts to the tribunals.

On the need for having the circuit benches, justice Mathur cited the example of the regional bench in Rajasthan and said it is in Jaipur but the majority of the armed forces personnel in the state are in and around the border areas near Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Barmer.

"So, if we can go to Jodhpur and sit there for a week, we can help in giving justice to people in those areas also and similarly, the other benches can also do the same," he added.

On the number of cases disposed of by the principal bench of the tribunal, justice Mathur said, "Of the 2226 applications received by us, 1002 have been already disposed of and if the same trend continues, within next one year, the number of pending cases would be close to negligible."

Commenting on the "speedy" justice provided by the tribunal, Armed Forces Tribunal's Principal Bench Bar Association president AK Trivedi said, "People are getting speedy justice and we see that a number of cases which were pending in respective high courts for more than a decade or so are getting resolved in a matter of few months and hearings."

The tribunal chairperson said eight of the nine planned Benches of the tribunal have already been operationalised and the Mumbai bench is also expected to start its work soon.

The tribunal is the only one of its kind in the world which hears cases related to pension, court martial, promotion and others service related matters of the armed forces and has passed several important judgements including that in Brigadier Devinder Singh's case related to the Kargil war and the Sukna land scam.

Military tribunals are there in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada but they hear only court martial related matters.