The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Chartered Accountants (CAs) having less than 25 years of professional experience were eligible for appointment as Technical Members in tribunals, including the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT).
The Bench of Chief Justice of India BR Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran made these observations while delivering judgment in the Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (W.P. (C) 1018 of 2021), which examined provisions of the Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021. The order was passed after the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) sought parity with advocates.
The Counsel appearing for ICAI argued that while striking down the requirement that advocates must have attained 50 years of age to be appointed to tribunal posts, the Apex Court had left unaddressed the corresponding stipulation that CAs must complete 25 years of practice before being considered for similar appointments.
The top court of the country accepted the submission that the impugned eligibility criterion effectively delayed the entry of qualified CAs into judicial service until they were around 50 years of age, thereby imposing an arbitrary and disproportionate professional threshold.
Noting that it had already declared the analogous condition applicable to advocates unconstitutional, holding that such provisions violated principles of equality under Article 14 and imposed unreasonable restrictions on professional entry to public service, the Apex Court said it would apply the same constitutional analysis to the requirements imposed on CAs.
The Tribunal Reforms Act’s experience threshold lacked rational nexus with the objective of securing domain expertise in the tribunal system, observed the Bench.
It said that highly experienced CAs possessed the necessary adjudicatory competence, professional exposure, and sectoral insight well before reaching the 25-year mark, making a rigid temporal benchmark constitutionally unsustainable.
The Apex Court further observed that confining eligibility to practitioners who have completed 25 years of service would undermine the pool of qualified candidates and impede the infusion of young and mid-career professionals into the tribunal ecosystem. The requirement was declared unconstitutional to the extent that it imposed a mandatory 25-year practice condition.
The verdict further recorded that the Union Government must take the Court’s findings into account when framing any future statutory regime governing qualification standards for tribunal appointments in compliance with the present ruling.
It reinforced the Court’s repeated position that tribunal service conditions must adhere to constitutional standards of equality, administrative fairness, and institutional efficiency. The Apex Court underscored in the judgment that artificially restrictive entry barriers could not be sustained merely on the basis of legislative preference.
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