Tribunals have a raison d’être in the justice system: they allow specialists to settle technical disputes faster than the judiciary could. In S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987) and L. Chandra Kumar (1997), the Supreme Court said that tribunals’ decisions remain subject to review by High Courts because judicial review is part of the basic structure. Sensible though they were, the orders left a structural flaw standing. Tribunals have historically been administered by the same Ministries whose decisions the tribunal might have to review. In Rojer Mathew (2019), the Court recommended an independent, statutory National Tribunals Commission (NTC) to oversee the selection and administration of tribunals. However, Parliament used the Finance Act 2017 to give the executive more control over appointments and the Tribunals Reforms Ordinance 2021 to reinstate conditions the Court had rejected. The final straw was the Court’s judgment in Madras Bar Association (2025), where it struck down the objectionable provisions Parliament had re-enacted, restored the previous framework, and gave the government four months to establish the NTC. That is the Tribunal Reforms Bill 2026, which the Lok Sabha passed on August 10 with no discussion, and the Rajya Sabha on August 11. To its credit, inter alia, the Bill restores the five-year terms for tribunal members, introduces uniform service conditions, includes provisions for a National Tribunals Data Grid, and does not maroon already pending appointments.

However, the Bill still does not give the NTC enough institutional autonomy. For one, Section 14 leaves the qualifications, manner of selection, salaries, allowances, and other conditions of service of tribunal members to future executive rules. But in Rojer Mathew, Justice Deepak Gupta had held that defining who is qualified to exercise judicial power is an essential legislative function that cannot be delegated to rulemaking. Yet, the Bill claims consonance with the 2025 judgment while making room for the sort of delegation the judge’s line of reasoning had resisted. Experts have also flagged similarly vague language in Section 3. Further, under Section 16, a Ministry will first screen a complaint before it passes to the NTC for inquiry. So, while the process is more elaborate than it was in 2021, the Centre still appoints the NTC’s members, only consulting the CJI for the chairperson and judicial members, and retains substantial influence over its finances and administration. That is essentially a continuing failure: a commission designed to insulate tribunals from executive control cannot be thus subject to the terms of the executive. The government must make the NTC fully independent by forsaking its power to appoint or remove its members at will.

Published - August 12, 2026 12:10 am IST