New Delhi, June 14: A.K. Antony has berated officers for being tardy in drafting rules for an armed forces tribunal he had planned to set up by June 1.

The defence minister is particularly anxious that the Armed Forces Tribunal — a military version of the Central Administrative Tribunal— be set up because crucial military disputes, including matters of life and death, are pending both in courts and on his desk.

Antony has now directed that the principal bench of the tribunal be set up by next month and the eight other benches by December, a senior defence ministry source said.

The minister called bureaucrats and legal officers of the army, the navy and the air force and stated clearly that his June 1 deadline to set up the tribunal was not met because they were lax.

More than 10,000 cases concerning military personnel are pending in courts. The defence minister also has to take a view on death sentences handed to soldiers by general courts martial for killing their superiors.

Should the tribunal be set up, all these cases will automatically get transferred to it, lightening the burden on the minister of dealing with such tricky issues.

At the meeting on Thursday, it was decided that the notification for the tribunal would be sent to the Union law ministry for vetting.

The principal bench of the tribunal is to be set up in New Delhi where an office has been found in the R.K. Puram locality. There would be eight other benches in Calcutta, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Jaipur, Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai and Shillong or Guwahati.

The act for the tribunal passed last December lays down that all cases of the military — such as allegations of bias in promotional matters, criminal charges, cases filed by officers/soldiers against their superiors and the government or vice versa — will automatically get transferred from the high courts to the tribunal. The appellate authority for the tribunal is the Supreme Court.

Antony has also written to the Chief Justice, K.G. Balakrishnan, seeking his recommendation for a Supreme Court judge who would chair the tribunal .

The tribunal will have 24 members (between one and three on each bench). The minister said the tribunal must reflect a “tri-service” character, meaning that no single service should dominate its benches.