Section 20 — Salary, Allowances Payable to and Term of Office

An adjudicating body's independence rests partly on whether the people making decisions can have their pay or tenure changed by the same government whose own instrumentalities they might need to rule against. Section 20 addresses the pay side directly and sets a fixed, short term for the tenure side.

Pay fixed at appointment, protected from later reduction — 20(1)

The salary, allowances and other terms and conditions of service of the Chairperson and other Members are whatever gets prescribed, but once fixed at appointment, they can't be varied to that person's disadvantage afterward. This is a standard safeguard for quasi-judicial appointments — it stops the government from applying financial pressure on a sitting Chairperson or Member mid-term by simply cutting pay or benefits.

A two-year term, renewable — 20(2)

The Chairperson and other Members hold office for a term of two years, and are eligible for re-appointment. Two years is short relative to many statutory tribunals, and because re-appointment runs through the same Central Government that made the original appointment under Section 19(2), the practical independence of a Member's second term depends on how that re-appointment decision is exercised, not on anything the Act itself constrains further.

Why this matters in practice

The pay-protection rule in 20(1) is unambiguous and self-executing — it applies regardless of who's in government at any given time. The two-year, renewable term in 20(2) is a structural feature worth understanding rather than glossing over: a Member's continuation past the first term rests on a fresh appointment decision, not an automatic entitlement, and the Act doesn't set out separate criteria for re-appointment beyond the qualifications standard in Section 19(3) that applied to the original appointment.

Illustration: a Member appointed for a two-year term who wants to continue serving has no automatic right to a second term under Section 20 alone — continuation depends on the Central Government making a fresh appointment decision, the same mechanism Section 19(2) uses for a first-time appointment.

How Section 20 connects to the rest of the Act

Section 19 is what creates the office Section 20 attaches terms to. Section 21 sets out the separate question of disqualification and removal mid-term, which operates independently of the two-year term expiring on schedule. Section 22 covers what happens once a term ends, is cut short by resignation, or a vacancy otherwise opens up.