L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India and Others

Article 323A, inserted in 1976, enabled Parliament to set up administrative tribunals for service matters and to exclude the jurisdiction of all courts except the Supreme Court under Article 136; Article 323B did the same for tribunals in other fields. Section 28 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 excluded the jurisdiction of the High Courts accordingly. In S.P. Sampath Kumar a Constitution Bench had upheld the scheme on the footing that the tribunals would be effective substitutes for the High Courts. Doubts about that approach led to a reference to a seven-judge Bench.

Speaking for the seven-judge Bench, Ahmadi C.J. held that the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227, and in the Supreme Court under Article 32, is an integral and essential feature of the Constitution and part of its basic structure. Ordinarily it cannot be ousted or excluded.

Clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B were therefore unconstitutional to the extent that they excluded the jurisdiction of the High Courts and the Supreme Court under Articles 226, 227 and 32, as were Section 28 of the 1985 Act and the exclusion clauses in other statutes made under those Articles.

Tribunals may nonetheless play a supplemental role. They can examine the constitutional validity of statutory provisions and rules, except the statute under which they are themselves constituted, and they remain the courts of first instance in their fields, so litigants cannot bypass them and go directly to the High Court. Their decisions are subject to scrutiny by a Division Bench of the High Court within whose jurisdiction the tribunal falls.