New Delhi: Central tribunals in the country are laggards when it comes to disposal of cases. A combined 3.50 lakh cases are pending in the top five central tribunals in the country. The Income Tax Appellate Tribunals are having a staggering backlog of 91,000 cases.

This has been revealed in the latest report of the Law Commissioin.

Pointing out that the concept of tribunals was developed to overcome the crisis of delay and backlogs in the administration of justice in regular courts, the Law Commission has said,”However, the data officially available, in respect of working of some of the tribunals do not depict a satisfactory picture.”

The law panel,  in its report ‘Assessment of Statutory Frameworks of Tribunals in India’ submitted to the law ministry, has said  “though the disposal rate of the tribunals in comparison to the filing of cases per year had been remarkable — 94 per cent — the pendency remains high.”

The total backlog of the five tribunals- Central Administrative Tribunal(CAT), Railway Claims Tribunal(RCT), Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT), Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appeal Tribunal(CESTAT), and Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT)  comes to 3,50,185.

The ITAT had the highest 91,538 pending cases at the end of 2016.

While the Central Administrative Tribunal had 44,333 pending cases as in July 2017, the Railway Claims Tribunal had 45,604 pending cases as on 30 September, 2016. The Debt Recovery Tribunal had a backlog of 78,118 cases as on July 3, 2016, and   the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appeal Tribunal reported 90,592 pending cases at the end of 2016.