Tribunal Reforms: How Modi’s Government Restructured Judicial Tribunals

Tribunals, specialised quasi-judicial bodies that handle specific categories of disputes outside the ordinary court system, have been a recurring source of legal and institutional friction between the government and the judiciary. This article explains the 2021 reform, the Supreme Court challenge it faced, and a major 2025 ruling that has reshaped the picture again.

What the 2021 Act Changed

The Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021 abolished several specific tribunals, including the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal and the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority Appellate Tribunal, transferring their functions directly to High Courts instead, according to background compiled on the reform, while also establishing standardised tenure and qualification norms for tribunal members across the remaining tribunal system, an attempt to bring more administrative consistency to a tribunal landscape that had previously operated under a patchwork of different individual laws governing each specific tribunal’s own rules.

The Madras Bar Association Precedent

This reform did not emerge in a vacuum; it followed a series of earlier Supreme Court rulings in cases collectively known as the Madras Bar Association litigation, in which the Court had already struck down similar earlier provisions, including a 2020 ordinance and prior tribunal-related laws, specifically over concerns that short member tenures and executive-dominated selection committees undermined tribunals’ judicial independence, since tribunal members serving short terms subject to reappointment decisions substantially controlled by the executive branch face an inherent structural pressure that could compromise their ability to rule against the government without concern for their own career consequences.

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The November 2025 Supreme Court Ruling

Despite the 2021 Act’s attempt to address these earlier concerns, the reform faced renewed and ultimately successful legal challenge. In a further Madras Bar Association v. Union of India ruling delivered around November 19, 2025, according to coverage by Drishti Judiciary and News on Air, the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021 itself, finding the underlying independence concerns from the earlier litigation had not been adequately resolved, and specifically directed the Union government to establish a National Tribunals Commission within four months, a new dedicated body intended to insulate tribunal appointments, service conditions, and infrastructure decisions from direct executive control going forward.

Why Chronic Vacancies Became Part of the Story

Alongside the specific constitutional and independence concerns, a separate but related practical problem had also built up across this same period: chronic vacancies and functional paralysis across several major tribunals, including the National Company Law Tribunal, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, and the Securities Appellate Tribunal, according to LiveLaw’s analysis piece specifically examining what it termed the “economic cost of tribunal dysfunction,” with years of appointment delays leaving these tribunals operating with fewer members than their caseload required, a practical consequence that compounded the more abstract independence concerns with genuine, measurable delays in case resolution affecting businesses and individuals with active matters before these bodies.

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Where Implementation Stands Now

As of the most recent available tracking, according to coverage by Vajiram & Ravi and Mondaq, the government’s implementation of the Supreme Court’s National Tribunals Commission directive remained pending, with the underlying tribunal vacancy and case-backlog issues the LiveLaw analysis had documented persisting even after the November 2025 ruling, meaning the practical, on-the-ground effect of the Court’s latest intervention had not yet been fully realised at the time of this writing, illustrating how even a definitive Supreme Court ruling ordering a specific institutional fix can take considerable additional time to translate into genuine operational change.

Why This Pattern Recurs Across Tribunal Reform Attempts

Looking at the full sequence, the original tribunal-specific laws, the 2020 ordinance, the 2021 Tribunal Reforms Act, and now the November 2025 ruling and its still-pending National Tribunals Commission directive, reveals a recurring pattern: successive government attempts to restructure the tribunal system have repeatedly run into the same underlying judicial concern about executive control over appointments and tenure, with each round of reform addressing some but not all of the Court’s concerns, prompting yet another round of litigation and correction, a cycle that has continued across multiple years without yet producing a version of the tribunal system both branches of government fully agree meets the judiciary’s independence standard.

Bottom Line

The Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021 abolished several tribunals and standardised member tenure and qualifications, but a November 2025 Supreme Court ruling in the latest Madras Bar Association case found the reform still hadn’t adequately addressed judicial independence concerns first raised years earlier, striking down key provisions and ordering the government to establish a National Tribunals Commission within four months, a directive whose implementation remained pending as of the most recent reporting, even as chronic vacancies and case backlogs across major tribunals like the NCLT continued to compound the underlying structural concerns.

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Abhyudaya Verma