Electoral reforms in India GS:2 "EMPOWER IAS"

 

 

In news

• The Supreme Court has challenged the government to produce material showing its reasons for introducing the Tribunal Reforms Bill of 2021, which abolishes nine appellate tribunals and revives provisions of an ordinance struck down by the Supreme Court, in the Parliament.

 

Tribunals

• Tribunals are specialist judicial bodies that decide disputes in a particular area of law.
• They are institutions established for discharging judicial or quasi-judicial duties.
• The objective may be to reduce the caseload of the judiciary or to bring in subject expertise for technical matters.
• Tribunal is a quasi-judicial institution that is set up to deal with problems such as resolving administrative or tax-related disputes. It performs a number of functions like adjudicating disputes, determining rights between contesting parties, making an administrative decision, reviewing an existing administrative decision and so forth.
• The term ‘Tribunal’ is derived from the word ‘Tribunes’, which means ‘Magistrates of the Classical Roman Republic’.
  • Tribunal is referred to as the office of the ‘Tribunes’ i.e., a Roman official under the monarchy and the republic with the function of protecting the citizen from arbitrary action by the aristocrat magistrates.
• A Tribunal, generally, is any person or institution having an authority to judge, adjudicate on, or to determine claims or disputes – whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title.

 

Need of Tribunal

• To overcome the situation that arose due to the pendency of cases in various Courts, domestic tribunals and other Tribunals have been established under different Statutes, hereinafter referred to as the Tribunals.
• The Tribunals were set up to reduce the workload of courts, to expedite decisions and to provide a forum which would be manned by lawyers and experts in the areas falling under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
• The tribunals perform an important and specialised role in justice mechanism. They take a load off the already overburdened courts. They hear disputes related to the environment, armed forces, tax and administrative issues.

Constitutional Provisions

 

• Tribunals were not part of the original constitution, it was incorporated in the Indian Constitution by 42^nd Amendment Act, 1976.
  • Article 323-A deals with Administrative Tribunals.
  • Article 323-B deals with tribunals for other matters.
• Under Article 323 B, the Parliament and the state legislatures are authorised to provide for the establishment of tribunals for the adjudication of disputes relating to the following matters:
  • Taxation
  • Foreign exchange, import and export
• Industrial and labour
• Land reforms
• Ceiling on urban property
• Elections to Parliament and state legislatures
• Food stuff
• Rent and tenancy rights

 

Articles 323 A and 323 B differ in the following three aspects:

• While Article 323 A contemplates the establishment of tribunals for public service matters only, Article 323 B contemplates the establishment of tribunals for certain other matters (mentioned above).
• While tribunals under Article 323 A can be established only by Parliament, tribunals under Article 323 B can be established both by Parliament and state legislatures with respect to matters falling within their legislative competence.
• Under Article 323 A, only one tribunal for the Centre and one for each state or two or more states may be established. There is no question of the hierarchy of tribunals, whereas under Article 323 B a hierarchy of tribunals may be created.
• Article 262: The Indian Constitution provides a role for the Central government in adjudicating conflicts surrounding inter-state rivers that arise among the state/regional governments.