New Delhi, February 26 Expressing serious displeasure over the functioning of tribunals in the country, the Supreme Court on Thursday said they have become a "liability" and "mess" without any "accountability" and flagged that technical members of a financial tribunal were even "outsourcing the writing of judgments".
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi observed that tribunals are "a creation of the government" and are functioning like "no-man's land" without any accountability to anyone.
The top court was hearing a plea for extension of tenure of tribunal members, including chairpersons, in the wake of last year's verdict which struck down the Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021.
Asking Attorney General R Venkataramani to make some arrangement for urgent filling of vacancies, the bench flagged that according to the present regime, a technical member of the TDSAT tribunal becomes an acting chairperson of the quasi-judicial body upon the retirement of the incumbent chairperson.
The top court asked the AG to ensure that there are no functional crises in such important tribunals as it frowned upon the regime where a technical member will occupy the post of chairperson.
CJI Kant said, "Mr. Attorney General, tribunals are your (Centre) creation, and they have become a headache. They are a headache for you and a liability for us. They are a liability for us because of the kind of orders they pass. The way they are functioning is becoming a challenge for us due to the legislative regime."
"Now the kind of orders we are seeing, barring a few tribunals, these institutions have become a no man's land as they are not accountable to the judiciary nor are they accountable to anyone on earth," he said.
The Attorney General said the government was trying to develop a mechanism for expeditious filling of vacancies.
CJI Kant said it was not in national interest that the tribunals are not accountable to anyone.
The bench further said the court was not inclined to grant blanket extension of tenure to the existing members but was constrained to do so due to the non-filling of vacancies in tribunals.
The CJI said that he has credible information regarding one important tribunal which has gained importance due to the economy of the country and where technical members were not writing judgments on their own.
"These technical members are not writing a single judgment, they are insisting that judicial members should write the judgment on their behalf and name. I even know the audacity of one technical member, who asked a judicial member to write the judgment in his name and blackmailed that he would not sign the judgement."
"There are some technical members of the tribunal who are actually outsourcing the writing of judgments, something completely unheard in the judicial system. I am really perturbed and someday, I would sack them at appropriate time. What a mess we have created in the name of creating a tribunal, only with over-anxiety of not taking much burden, we have created this," the CJI said.
An irked CJI further said these technical members don't understand environmental law, company law and insolvency laws and the high court judges are not getting exposure to these subjects.
"These judges don't learn any environmental law, commercial law etc. and in the four years they are expected to become experts. Perhaps a completely new mechanism is needed. The manner in which they are completely unaccountable is not in national interest," he said.
Directing for extension of tenures of chairpersons of tribunals as interim measure till further orders or alternate arrangements are made, the bench asked the Centre to streamline the process expeditiously.
In November 2025, the top court had struck down the provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 on appointment and tenure of tribunal members, for being violative of its earlier judgments on the issue.