Additional Solicitor General of India (Supreme Court) The views expressed are personal to the author.
Few questions concerning the constitution of tribunals under our public laws have been revisited as frequently as this one. From the S.P. Sampath Kumar case in 1987 to the judgment concerning the Madras Bar Association in November 2025, courts have struck down legislation, issued directions, and subsequently found themselves reviewing new laws framed on the basis of those very directions. The subject has gone through so many cycles that the persistence of the issue itself demonstrates how difficult the problem has been.
The Tribunal Reforms Bill, 2026 therefore deserves attention because it appears to have finally identified the underlying problem and, hopefully, found a solution to it.
Lessons from Other Countries and Our Own Experience
This is not a problem unique to India. Other countries have faced similar challenges, and the solutions they adopted are worth examining.
When Sir Andrew Leggatt reviewed the tribunal system in the United Kingdom in 2001, he found that more than 70 tribunals were being administered by the very departments whose decisions they were required to review. He identified this as a fundamental structural flaw.
His solution was not to merely alter tenure provisions or refine eligibility criteria. Instead, he proposed separating tribunals administratively from their sponsoring departments and placing their administration under a single unified service. This reform became the foundation of the 2007 legislation.
The reform was structural. It addressed not merely the symptoms of dependence but the institutional cause of that dependence.
India adopted the tribunal system at an early stage and, by and large, it has been successful. The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, established in 1941, remains one of the finest examples of specialised adjudication.
The model was subsequently strengthened through Articles 323A and 323B of the Constitution and the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, and was later extended to several regulatory fields where the specialised expertise required could not easily be accommodated within the conventional High Court structure.
Our problem, however, was somewhat different.
As the Supreme Court observed in 2020, independence can be ensured only when tribunals do not have to depend upon the executive machinery for performing their functions.
Why Earlier Attempts Failed to Resolve the Problem
Reforms have been attempted more than once, and each was undertaken with genuine intent.
Yet much of the litigation that followed revolved around questions such as whether the tenure should be three, four or five years, whether a minimum age of 50 years was constitutionally acceptable, and whether a selection committee should recommend one name or two.
With due respect, none of these questions addresses the fundamental problem.
Independent tribunals cannot be built on arithmetic.
Tenure, age and the number of names recommended are symptoms through which the problem has been diagnosed. They are not the disease itself.
The Fundamental Issue
The fundamental principle is that a tribunal must be an independent and self-sufficient institution.
It must have:
- Its own institutional establishment;
- Its own mechanism for selecting its members;
- Its own system for supervision and disciplinary control;
- Its own arrangements for premises and staff; and
- Its own financial and administrative resources.
Where these institutional arrangements exist, independence follows naturally.
The new Bill responds to each of the concerns on which the courts have already expressed themselves. More importantly, however, it seeks to establish an institution capable of implementing those safeguards on its own.
The National Tribunals Commission is proposed to be established by statute. Its existence, composition and functions will be governed by an Act of Parliament rather than an executive order.
The Commission will be entrusted with responsibility for selection, supervision, discipline and assessment of the requirements of tribunals. Around it, a permanent professional secretariat will be established.
Judicial Primacy, Institutional Distance and Controls
The Bill retains judicial primacy wherever it matters most.
The Commission will be headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or a Chief Justice of a High Court, and judicial representation will constitute a majority. The committees will have judicial leadership, with the casting vote resting with the judicial chairperson.
Selection, supervision, discipline and performance-related matters will therefore have judicial leadership.
This is consistent with what the courts have repeatedly held since the R. Gandhi case: the executive, being the largest litigant before tribunals, cannot be permitted to exercise a dominant role in selecting those who are required to adjudicate disputes involving the government.
At the same time, judicial primacy should not be confused with judicial control.
Entrusting the entire administrative structure to the judiciary can itself create institutional challenges. The Bill therefore seeks to maintain the tribunal system at an appropriate distance from both the executive and the judiciary through a three-level framework.
The Central Government will prescribe broad principles through rules.
The National Tribunals Commission will frame regulations governing how those principles are implemented.
The Secretariat will operate within that statutory and regulatory framework.
While the Secretariat will receive guidance on its functioning, it will not be subject to operational directions in the ordinary course. Its authority will flow directly from the statute rather than from delegated authority or functions assigned by another institution.
This creates a genuine system of checks and balances involving the National Tribunals Commission, its Secretariat and the executive.
The Secretariat will examine eligibility and maintain records on the basis of which decisions are to be taken. It will be bound by published regulations and will maintain records of its actions.
A Delicate Institutional Balance
This is the delicate balance that the Bill seeks to establish.
It avoids judicial interference in day-to-day administration while also preventing genuine dependence on the executive.
At the same time, judicial primacy is retained in selection, supervision, discipline and performance oversight.
Canada adopted a somewhat similar approach in 2014 when it brought the support services of its federal tribunals under a common organisational structure while preserving the adjudicatory independence of the tribunals themselves.
The lesson is important: institutional independence does not necessarily require every administrative function to be performed by the adjudicatory body itself. What matters is that administrative arrangements should not compromise the tribunal’s ability to decide cases independently.
The Real Test of Tribunal Reform
A law of this nature should not be evaluated solely on the question of whether it will withstand a constitutional challenge.
The more important test is whether it eliminates the conditions that give rise to those challenges in the first place.
The Bill meets that test.
If implemented in the form proposed, there is little doubt that it could significantly improve India’s tribunal system.
Ultimately, litigants should have access to a forum that is properly constituted, adequately staffed and institutionally independent, where vacancies are filled in a timely manner and where the tribunal system remains accountable for its performance.
The model proposed here could, if successfully implemented, provide a useful institutional framework not only for tribunals but potentially for other areas involving independent appointments and specialised adjudication in the future.
A tribunal that is genuinely complete in itself is not merely an administrative convenience. It is an essential component of meaningful access to independent justice.
