Tribunalisation in Retreat? Evaluating the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 and the Erosion of Administrative Adjudicatory Independence in India

The Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 represents the most consequential restructuring of India’s tribunal system since Articles 323A and 323B were written into the Constitution in 1976. The Act abolished a set of long-standing appellate tribunals, transferred their jurisdiction back to the ordinary courts, and re-enacted conditions of service that the Supreme Court had struck down barely a month earlier. This paper evaluates the Act against the constitutional standards developed from S.P. Sampath Kumar through L. Chandra Kumar, Union of India v. R. Gandhi, Rojer Mathew and the Madras Bar Association line of decisions. It argues that the statute is best understood not as rationalisation but as retreat: a withdrawal from the constitutional promise of specialised, accessible and independent adjudication, accomplished through short tenures, executive-dominated selection and legislative override of judicial directions. The paper examines the separation of powers problems raised by re-enactment without curing invalidity, assesses the functional consequences for litigants, draws on the Franks and Leggatt reports for comparative perspective, and makes the case for a National Tribunals Commission as the structural answer.