The Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2026, recently passed by the Lok Sabha, should be judged not by the shortcomings of earlier experiments but by whether it has learnt from them. On vacancies, independence and accountability, it makes a serious attempt to do precisely that.

The Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha, is best understood against the unsettled history of tribunal reform. Its Statement of Objects and Reasons traces that history from the rationalisation exercise that began in 2015, through the Finance Act, 2017, the 2021 Ordinance and finally the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021. But the significance of the 2026 Bill lies in what happened thereafter.

In Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2025), the Supreme Court (SC) held that important parts of the 2021 framework did not sufficiently respect the separation of powers and judicial independence. The Court was particularly troubled by provisions which substantially revived arrangements it had already disapproved, including a four-year tenure, a minimum age requirement of 50 years, a system requiring two names to be sent for every vacancy, and an appointment timeline under which the government was required to act only “preferably” within three months. It also reiterated a more fundamental concern: Tribunals could not indefinitely remain administratively dependent upon the very executive departments whose decisions they were often required to review.

That is why the essence of the 2026 Bill is structural, not cosmetic. The SC did not merely ask Parliament to alter a few service conditions. It advised the establishment of an independent National Tribunals Commission........

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