PRAYAGRAJ, May 14 -- The Allahabad high court has taken serious note of the transfer of cases that fell within the territorial jurisdiction of the Central Administrative Tribunal's (CAT's) Allahabad bench to its principal bench in New Delhi. In this backdrop, the high court said the chairman of the principal bench had misinterpreted the provisions relating to the case transfer power given to him under Section 25 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 for entertaining directly fresh petitions, which otherwise fell within the territorial jurisdiction of the Allahabad bench. Hearing a writ petition filed by one Rajesh Pratap Singh, Justice Ajit Kumar directed the central government and other respondents to file a reply in the case within four weeks. The court also asked for the listing of this writ petition on July 17 for the next hearing. Passing the above directives, the court observed: "Since the petitions have been entertained by the principal bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Delhi, it has resulted in the action of lawyers to abstain from work at Allahabad, as they complain that all the petitions are being entertained directly by Principal Bench at New Delhi only on the grounds that districts falling in the western Uttar Pradesh are closer to New Delhi and this is how this petition has been directly preferred before this court". "The orders that have been passed by the chairman of the tribunal placed before this court raise a legal issue whether the chairman sitting at the principal bench of the tribunal could have entertained a fresh matter directly to decide the same merely on the grounds of distance qua place of residence of a party. If that be so then every such case that may fall in terms of distance closer to Delhi would lie before the Principal Bench at New Delhi completely denuding the exercise of power by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Allahabad Bench in terms of its territorial jurisdiction..." the court added. "This is something like acquiring territorial jurisdiction by merely exercising power under section 25 of the Act, 1985 on a regular basis which the legislature did not provide for, while assigning territorial jurisdiction to Central Administrative Tribunal Bench at Allahabad. This is neither the idea nor the intendment while providing a power under Section 25 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985," the court added in its order dated May 12....