Tribunals: Article 323A, 323B, and the 2025 Verdict

Tribunals sit outside the ordinary hierarchy of civil courts and subordinate courts this site's own Subordinate Courts note covers, created instead by specific statutes to adjudicate disputes in a particular subject area, faster and with more specialised expertise than an ordinary court bench is expected to have. The constitutional basis for most of them traces to two articles inserted by a single amendment, and this chapter's exam value sits almost entirely in the precise differences between those two articles, and in a landmark case, decided twice, four decades apart, that keeps this whole structure inside the judiciary's own supervisory reach.

Part XIVA: Articles 323A and 323B, inserted together, scoped differently

The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 inserted Part XIVA, Articles 323A and 323B, with effect from 1 March 1977. Both articles let a legislature create tribunals rather than route disputes through ordinary courts, but they differ in exactly who may create one and over exactly what:

Article 323A covers administrative tribunals for disputes over recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services and posts under the Union, a state, a local authority, or any government-controlled corporation or body. It can be invoked only by Parliament, even where the tribunal being created is meant to serve a single state, and it contemplates a single tribunal for the Union and, where Parliament chooses, one for each state or two or more states jointly. Parliament used this power to enact the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, which established the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for Union government service matters, alongside State Administrative Tribunals for states that requested one.

Article 323B is broader on both dimensions that matter. It covers tribunals for a named list of other subjects, including taxation, foreign exchange and export, industrial and labour disputes, land reforms, urban property ceilings, elections to Parliament and the state legislatures, and food adulteration, and, unlike Article 323A, it can be invoked by both Parliament and a state legislature, each acting within its own ordinary legislative competence over the subject in question. Article 323B also allows for a hierarchy of tribunals within its scope where a matter calls for it, a structural flexibility Article 323A's single-tribunal-per-government-level design does not build in.

The National Green Tribunal, established under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, rests on Article 323B rather than 323A, since environmental adjudication is not a service matter; it replaced the National Environment Appellate Authority and now hears civil cases involving a substantial question relating to environment under the specific enactments listed in its own Schedule I.

L. Chandra Kumar v Union of India (1997): why tribunals cannot exclude the High Courts

As originally enacted, Articles 323A(2)(d) and 323B(3)(d) let Parliament exclude the jurisdiction of every court, the High Courts included, over matters assigned to a tribunal, other than a direct appeal to the Supreme Court under Article 136. The Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 used exactly this power, so an aggrieved government employee could challenge a CAT order only by an SLP straight to the Supreme Court, bypassing the High Courts entirely.

In L. Chandra Kumar v Union of India (1997), a seven-judge Constitution Bench held that this exclusion was unconstitutional: the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227, and in the Supreme Court under Article 32, is part of the Constitution's basic structure, the same basic-structure doctrine this site's Supreme Court note already traces through Kesavananda Bharati and Minerva Mills, and no ordinary tribunal created by statute can be substituted for that judicial review, only supplement it. The Court's remedy was precise rather than a wholesale strike-down: tribunals continue to function as the first-instance forum for the disputes assigned to them, but an order from any tribunal is now open to challenge before a Division Bench of the jurisdictional High Court, and only from there, in the ordinary course, to the Supreme Court. This makes L. Chandra Kumar a direct structural cousin of the NJAC judgment already covered in the Supreme Court note: both struck down a legislative attempt to exclude judicial review as incompatible with the basic structure, one over judicial appointments, the other over tribunal appeals.

Appointments and tenure: the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, and its 2025 reversal

Repeated litigation over who controls tribunal appointments is itself a recurring feature of this chapter, not an isolated episode. The Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 consolidated the rules on appointment, tenure, and service conditions across tribunals, fixing a four-year term and a minimum age of 50 for chairpersons and members, and routing appointments through a Search-cum-Selection Committee (two judicial members, three executive members, chaired by the CJI or a Supreme Court judge the CJI nominates, with the Committee's Member-Secretary, a government Secretary, holding no vote) that would recommend two names per vacancy for the Union Government to choose from.

In Madras Bar Association v Union of India (19 November 2025), the Supreme Court held these appointment, tenure, and service-condition provisions unconstitutional, finding that the structure gave the executive excessive control over tribunal members in a way that compromised judicial independence, functional autonomy, and the separation of powers, all treated as part of the basic structure the same way L. Chandra Kumar treated judicial review itself. The Court directed that the standards already laid down in its own earlier Madras Bar Association rulings (2020 and 2021) continue to govern appointments, tenure and service conditions in the meantime, and separately directed the Union Government to establish a National Tribunals Commission within four months to oversee tribunal administration on an ongoing, judicially-insulated basis going forward.

Quick revision points

• Part XIVA (Articles 323A and 323B), inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976, effective 1 March 1977.
• Article 323A: administrative tribunals for public service recruitment and conditions of service only; can be created only by Parliament; implemented via the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 (Central Administrative Tribunal, plus State Administrative Tribunals).
• Article 323B: a wider named list of subjects (tax, foreign exchange, labour, land reforms, elections, food adulteration, and more); can be invoked by both Parliament and state legislatures within their own competence; permits a hierarchy of tribunals, unlike Article 323A.
• The National Green Tribunal (NGT Act, 2010) rests on Article 323B, not 323A.
• L. Chandra Kumar (1997): struck down the original exclusion of High Court jurisdiction as violating the basic structure's judicial-review guarantee; tribunal orders now go to a Division Bench of the High Court, not directly to the Supreme Court.
• Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021: 4-year tenure, minimum age 50, a Search-cum-Selection Committee proposing two names per vacancy. Its appointment and tenure provisions were struck down as unconstitutional in Madras Bar Association v Union of India (19 November 2025) for undermining judicial independence, with a National Tribunals Commission directed to be set up within four months.

Between the 323A/323B contrast and the two Madras Bar Association-era rulings, this chapter rewards precision on exactly which body created a given tribunal, under which article, and which court currently has the final supervisory word over it, the three things a statement-based question is built to test together.