The Delhi High Court, on Thursday, expressed dismay at the lack of concern shown by the Department of Financial Services (DFS) regarding vacancies in the Debt Recovery Tribunals, which led to pendency of over 1.25 lakh applications for recovery of over ₹15.15-lakh crore.

The High Court asked the Departmental Secretary to be present at the next hearing on August 25 and respond to the queries of the court, besides filing a better affidavit with regard to the functioning of the DRTs.

The real problem

In an order on a writ petition filed by Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd, a Division Bench, led by Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh, said the real problem faced by the DRTs today is that they are “headless and more or less defunct”.

“The petitioner has disclosed information received under the Right to Information Act from the DFS, according to which of the pending cases, the number of original applications with claims of ₹100 crore or above are 1,537, involving an amount of ₹11.89-lakh crore.

“Thus, the high-value recovery cases, though much less in number, account for the bulk of the amount of public monies to be recovered. The high-value recovery cases account for 1 per cent of the total pendency of the original applications before the DRTs but 80 per cent of the total amount involved,” said the Court. Observing that several tribunals do not have presiding officers for many months, the Judges said: “We are completely dismayed and are also not able to understand as to how the respondent (Department of Financial Services) can be so unconcerned about the seriousness of the problem. It is not fathomable as to why the respondents are turning a deaf ear to the appeals made not only by the banks and financial institutions, but also orders passed by us calling upon the respondent to discharge its duty of appointing officers to fill up the vacancies in the DRTs.”

The petitioners had raised an issue of disposal of high-value recovery cases pending before the DRTs in response to which the respondent department filed an affidavit saying that it had set up a committee to probe this aspect.

The committee recommended that the high value recovery cases of ₹100 crore or more should be filed through electronic mode to cut short the delays in service of copes. Apart from this, advisories are being issued that in high value recovery cases, the matter should not be adjourned for more than week. The court, however, said, serious recommendations would help in early disposal of cases only to some extent. The real problem, said the Judges, lay in the number of vacancies in the DRTs, which is leading to the tribunals being “more or less defunct”.

‘Completely unmindful’

“It also appears that despite the decisions of the Supreme Court holding that the lawyers with 10 years standing or more should also be qualified to offer their candidature for appointment to DRT, the respondent has till date not implemented the said decisions.

“It appears to us that either the respondents are completely unmindful of the seriousness of the problem or despite being aware of the problem are deliberately and consciously ensuring that DRTs do not function,” said the Bench in its order.