Tribunals

Story hook

It is 24 December 2020. A boardroom in Delhi crackles with the panic of three boards of directors merged into one. NCLAT — the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal — has just stayed the ₹13,000-crore Cyrus Mistry vs Tata Sons verdict, sending one of the most prestigious commercial disputes in India straight to the Supreme Court. A single tribunal bench has rewritten what corporate governance in India means.

Three thousand kilometres away, at the Karnataka Bench of the National Green Tribunal, an environmental activist files a petition under Section 14 of the NGT Act 2010 to stop a sand-mining operation. The case is decided in six months — a turnaround impossible in any High Court. The same year, the Central Administrative Tribunal disposes of 88,000 service matters. The Armed Forces Tribunal clears the backlog of 17,000 pension cases that the Supreme Court had earlier said the High Courts could not handle.

Tribunals are the forgotten fourth pillar of Indian dispute resolution — quasi-judicial bodies created to give specialised, speedy justice in domains where the regular courts could not cope. They sit awkwardly between executive and judiciary, their judges drawn partly from the bench and partly from the bureaucracy. The 42nd Amendment 1976 inserted Articles 323A and 323B to make tribunals constitutional. Forty-eight years later, the Supreme Court is still wrestling with what tribunals actually are.

Why this matters for UPSC

Tribunals show up in Prelims every 2 years as factual questions (NGT composition, CAT jurisdiction, NCLAT appeals route) and as GS-II Mains material on the separation of powers and access to justice. Interview boards probe the tribunalisation critique — does it dilute judicial independence? The 2021 Tribunals Reforms Act and the Madras Bar Association line of cases (1997-2021) make this a live, evolving topic.