Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar, one of the few MPs who understands Cyber Law has rightly drawn the attention of the Government to the need to appoint the Chair person to Cyebr Appellate Tribunal-CyAT. (Refer BS Article).
According to the report, he has written a letter to MR Ravishankar Prasad in this regard and urged early action. I hope the department will take cognizance of this request which comes from an MP with the knowledge of IT.
The problem however does not entirely that of the DeiTy and it appears to lead to the doors of the Chief Justice of India and the inability of the CJI and the DeITy to agree on a candidate given the issues involved in the appointment of Judges in general.
I wish Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar had written to the Chief Justice also.
In the past Naavi has written many letters in this regard both through the web and also directly and neither the CJI nor the Ministers and Secretaries in DeiTy or even the PMO have taken any positive action.
However, as an eternal optimist, I hope sooner or later, a decision has to be taken in this regard. It has taken more than 5 years now for the appointment and in the meantime the office of CyAT has been spending public money to remain in existence. It now seems to have a good Registrar also but all the expenses are going down the drain. Perhaps the CAG will also ask the question of what is happening to the investments made in CyAT.
I believe that appointing a Chair person for CyAT is only one of the many steps required to bring the Cyber Judicial system in India to acceptable levels and I will in a separate post that will follow outline some of my suggestions in this regard. I request Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar to take up these suggestions also with the Government and Judiciary.
Some of these suggestions will be directed to Karnataka Government and the Chief Justice of Karnataka in particular and the other State Governments and High Courts in general and can be done without much delay. Some may require notification from DeiTy which also should not take time. A few of the suggestions may require longer deliberation but like all reforms, we need to address the low hanging fruits first and let the momentum for reforms build up.
More will follow…(after an analysis of the NCRB cyber crime data of 2015 which has also been published yesterday)..
Naavi
A writ is already filed in Nagpur Bench of Mumbai High Court regarding this matter. It was informed to the petitioner in this writ that Government has appointed Retd. Justice Mrs KBK Vasuki wef 27 Jan 2016 as Chairperson of CYBER APPELLATE TRIBUNAL.But as of now the post of chairperson is vacant.