New Delhi, Aug 7 - President Pratibha Patil will Saturday inaugurate the Armed Forces Tribunal, providing a judicial forum to about 2.5 million armed forces personnel and ex-servicemen to redress their grievances, thus lessening the burden on various courts.

'The president will inaugurate the tribunal tomorrow. Aggrieved armed forces personnel will now be able to appeal against sentences handed down by the court-martial. The tribunal will also have powers to grant bail to any person in military custody,' a defence ministry official here Friday.

The tribunal will be functional once the government issues the notification in this regard.

Set up by an act of parliament in December 2007, the tribunal will have its principal bench in New Delhi and eight regional benches across the country. It will have 15 courts in all -- three each in New Delhi, Chandigarh and Lucknow and one each in Jaipur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Chennai and Kochi.

The tribunal will provide a judicial forum for redressal of grievances of about 1.3 million strong armed forces personnel and another 1.2 million ex-servicemen. At present about 9,800 such cases are pending before various courts across the country, most of them with the high courts.

'The tribunal will not only result in speedy and affordable justice to the men in uniform but also save the armed forces' resources in terms of manpower, material and time.