Sreya Kanugula
The Supreme Court gave notice on the petition filed which seeks directions on filling the vacant titles of chairman, members and other staff for administration at the Appellate Tribunal for the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
The bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R. Subhash Reddy and M.R. Shah gave the notice as per the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. It sought a reply on the matter within a period of 4 weeks.
The petition had been registered by Adv. Amit Sahni, who had made the submission of a filed RTI application which revealed that out of the entire composition of the tribunal (1 chairman and 4 members), it was functioning solely on a single member, that is, Mr. G.C Mishra serving as the tribunal’s acting chairman.
This is why the tribunal wasn’t taking up sufficient matters and several litigants, lawyers as well as the general public were paying the price for the same.
Furthermore, according to the RTI reply, the petitioner had informed the court that around 2,822 PMLA cases, 66 SAFEMA cases, 270 NDPS cases, 1,077 FEMA cases and 1,134 PBPT cases were still pending in front of the Tribunal.
Additional submissions had been made with references to several media reports dated August 2019 that the former Delhi High Court Judge, Justice Sunil Gaur had been appointed the Appellate Tribunal for PMLA’s acting chairman on Justice Manmohan Singh’s retirement in September of that year.
But the appointment in question wasn’t notified. The office of the ATP MLA’s chairman had been vacant since the month of September 2019.
Advocate Sahni had also stated a representation on December 26th, 2020 to the Centre seeking the relief being sought in the current petition, but no action was taken by them on the same to his knowledge and after considering the situation’s urgency, the petitioner had been left with no option besides approaching the Top Court.