Centre Must Provide Additional Staff When It Seeks Data From DRTs To Avoid Disruption Of Tribunal Work Due To Staff Diversion: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court today (January 17) held that Centre must provide additional staff to Debt Recovery Tribunals- if it wants DRTs to furnish data related to recovery of debt pursuant to DRT orders- so that the day-to-day functioning of the tribunals is not disrupted.

The bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan disposed of a case concerning the diversion of judicial staff from the DRT Visakhapatnam by the Ministry of Finance to collect huge amount of data on various aspects of the functioning of DRTs, including details of cases involving amounts over Rs. 100 crores and recovery figures.

The Court passed the following order: “we have perused the affidavit dated 2nd January, 2025 filed by Director, Ministry of Finance, Department of Financial Services, which records that a substantial number of posts sanctioned to different DRTs in the entire country have been filled in. Therefore, no further directions are necessary. However, we make it clear that if the Union of India wants Debt Recovery Tribunals to furnish data as sought in this case, additional hands be provided by the Union of India so that day-to-day functioning of the tribunals do not suffer. With the above observations, SLP is disposed of.”

Previously, the Court had criticized the Ministry for treating DRT staff as its subordinates and directed it to demonstrate whether the 39 DRTs across the country had the sanctioned 29 staff members and one Presiding Officer each. The Ministry was required to submit an affidavit by January 2, 2025, detailing the staff strength at each DRT.

During the hearing today, the counsel for the Ministry pointed to the affidavit and informed the Court that only four appointments were pending across the DRTs. The counsel stated, “Most of the appointments have been made except four.”

Justice Oka responded, “Therefore we will dispose of the petition by saying that whenever you call for data, you will provide extra staff to the tribunals because you treated them as subordinates.”

Background

On September 30, 2024, the Court expressed concerns about the Ministry treating the DRT as its subordinate office. It issued notice to the Ministry of Finance, Department of Financial Services, seeking an explanation.

On October 21, 2024, the Court sought the explanation of the Ministry of Finance for asking the DRTs to collect huge data on various aspects, including the amount recovered on the basis of their orders. Ministry apologized but sought to justify its actions on the ground that the data was necessary to improve the system. The Court criticized the justification, noting that DRTs were not adequately staffed to undertake such exercises.

The Court criticized the Ministry's approach of seeking data within three days via an email sent on September 9, 2024. This led to staff at DRT Visakhapatnam prioritizing data collection over judicial duties.

The Court also observed that if the Ministry required such data, it should have provided additional resources to the tribunals rather than expecting existing staff to shoulder the extra burden.

The Ministry justified the requisition, stating that DRTs had sufficient staff to undertake such tasks. The Court rejected this, questioning whether any DRT actually had the full sanctioned strength of 30 staff members. The Court stated that it had expected a proper standard operating procedure of affidavit from the Ministry for securing data from tribunals.

Case no. – Special Leave to Appeal (C) No. 11029/2024

Case Title – Superwhizz Professionals Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India & Ors.