Cuttack: Orissa High Court has indicated that it cannot decide on petitions challenging the state government's decision to abolish the State Administrative Tribunal without a response on it from the Centre.

The court gave the indication while hearing petitions filed by the Odisha State Administrative Tribunal Bar Associations in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

The two associations had filed their respective petitions in November last year after state-wide agitations by lawyers for revoking of the decision yielded no tangible outcome. Later, the petitioner associations sought for filling up the posts of members and chairman that have remained vacant for years.

The state cabinet approved to abolish the tribunal on September 9, 2015. It has a sanctioned strength of chairman and five members. But, it has since been functioning with an acting chairman, two members (judicial) and one member (administrative), resulting in piling up of cases. As many as 67,369 cases are pending before the tribunal.

Responding to notices, the state government submitted that a proposal for issue of a notification to abolish the tribunal had been sent to the Centre. After the notification is issued, the pending cases will be transferred to the high court. As the matter is pending before the Centre, no steps can be taken about the vacant posts, the state government had replied.

Accordingly, the court on April 12 sought a response from the Centre within a week. But when the matter came up on Monday, no response had been submitted in court. Taking note of it, the division bench of Justice S.C. Parija and Justice Debabrata Dash adjourned hearing and posted the matter to May 17 for hearing, along with the response from the Centre.

Accordingly, the court asked the Centre counsel to take instructions by then. It expected a response on the present status of the proposal submitted by the state government. The Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, empowered the central government to establish the tribunals on specific request of the concerned state governments. Subsequently, the Odisha one got established on July 14, 1986.

The petitioners have contended that the plea of pendency of cases for abolition of the tribunal is unjustified and unreasonable. In fact, non-compliance of the tribunal orders by the state during adjudication of cases, non-availability of members in most time as against the sanctioned strength is the major causes for such pendency.

The Odisha tribunal has its principal bench in Bhubaneswar, a regular bench in Cuttack and circuit bench in Sambalpur and Berhampur.

The state government had contended in court that the decision to abolish the tribunal was taken after it had been felt that the very objective of the institution to give quick justice to employees on service matters could not be achieved.