New Delhi, Jan 14 The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the city government to "strengthen" the Delhi School Tribunal and frame rules, preferably within three months, for effective implementation and execution of its orders.
A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia observed that in spite of the suggestion made by the High Court's full bench in 2010 to frame such rules, the authorities had not done so.
Noting that at present, the law had no provision for implementation of the order of the Delhi School Tribunal, the bench stated, "such a situation cannot be permitted to go on".
"You have to strengthen the tribunal. What is the difficulty in empowering the tribunal," the court remarked.
"We hope and expect that the need for having an execution mechanism shall be considered by the appropriate authorities and adequate steps shall be taken to provide for such a mechanism. We hope appropriate decision and action warranted will be completed as early as possible preferably within three months from today," the court ordered.
"We dispose of the petition with a direction to the LG or administrator to consider the issue raised in the petition and take appropriate steps to address the same by framing appropriate rules or evolving any other legally permissible mechanism," it added.
The court added that the Centre shall immediately consider any proposal made to it by the Delhi government in this regard.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation by an NGO, Justice for All.
The petitioner argued that the present legal framework did not permit any aggrieved employee of a private school to initiate execution proceedings for an order passed by the tribunal.
The counsel for the Delhi government said the petition was an abuse of process of law and the petitioner had failed to show any orders that were not executed.
The court stated that a tribunal must function within the four corners of its statute and unless the statute provided for execution, the same could not be permitted simply as a matter of "practice".
"We are of the view that suggestion as given by the full bench way back in 2010 ought to have been considered and appropriate mechanism ought to have been provided by framing the rules or evolving any other legally permissible mechanism. The judgement was rendered on August 27, 2010, i.e. about one and half decade ago.
"However, till date neither rules have been framed nor any other alternate mechanism has been evolved. Such a situation warrants immediate attention of the authorities," the court said.
