L. Chandra Kumar Case and Judicial Review of Tribunals

Tribunal judicial review is the power of the High Courts and the Supreme Court to examine and, where warranted, set aside the decisions of statutory tribunals such as the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). Whether this power could be excluded by ordinary legislation stayed unsettled for two decades after tribunals were introduced into the Constitution, until the Supreme Court's 1997 verdict in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India closed the question by holding that judicial review of tribunal orders cannot be taken away by any law or even by a constitutional amendment, because judicial review itself forms part of the Constitution's basic structure.

The 42nd Amendment and the Rise of Tribunals

The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 inserted a new Part XIVA into the Constitution, adding Articles 323A and 323B. Article 323A empowers Parliament to set up administrative tribunals to decide disputes over recruitment and service conditions of public employees, while Article 323B allows the appropriate legislature to create tribunals for other specified matters such as taxation, foreign exchange, industrial disputes, land reforms, and elections. Clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B both permitted the enabling law to exclude the jurisdiction of all courts other than the Supreme Court's appeal powers under Article 136.

Parliament exercised this power through the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, establishing the CAT and moving service-related disputes of Union government employees out of the High Courts' writ jurisdiction under Article 226 and into the Tribunal instead. The same 1976 amendment had also dropped the word "tribunals" from Article 227(1), narrowing the High Courts' power of superintendence over such bodies; this omission was reversed only by the 44th Amendment Act of 1978, which restored the word.

The First Challenge: S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987)

The exclusion of court jurisdiction was first tested in S.P. Sampath Kumar v. Union of India (1987). The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, but only on condition that the Act be amended to make tribunals genuinely effective substitutes for the High Courts — covering matters such as the composition and qualifications of tribunal members. Following this, the Act was amended and the Supreme Court's own jurisdiction under Article 32 against tribunal orders was restored. However, the High Courts' jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227 remained excluded, so an aggrieved employee could challenge a CAT order only by going directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the High Court altogether.

L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997)

A decade later, a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered under then Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi, revisited the constitutionality of the exclusion clauses. The Court held that clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B, along with matching exclusion-of-jurisdiction provisions in laws made under them (including Section 28 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985), were unconstitutional to the extent they barred the High Courts' jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227 and the Supreme Court's jurisdiction under Article 32.

The Bench reasoned that the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts and the Supreme Court is an integral and essential feature of the Constitution's basic structure, and that no law — and no constitutional amendment — can divest these courts of it. Tribunals, the Court clarified, could continue to function as the first-instance forum for the disputes assigned to them, but their orders would thereafter be open to scrutiny before a Division Bench of the High Court within whose territorial jurisdiction the Tribunal is located, before any further appeal.

Anchoring in the Basic Structure Doctrine

The reasoning in L. Chandra Kumar builds directly on earlier basic-structure rulings. In Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), a 13-judge Bench held that certain features of the Constitution — including judicial review — lie beyond the amending power of Parliament under Article 368. In Minerva Mills v. Union of India (1980), the Court struck down clauses inserted by the 42nd Amendment that had tried to place constitutional amendments beyond judicial scrutiny, holding that a limited amending power and judicial review are themselves basic features that Parliament cannot enlarge into an unlimited one. L. Chandra Kumar extended this logic from constitutional amendments to ordinary legislation governing tribunals, reaffirming that the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts and the Supreme Court cannot be legislated away either.

The doctrine of judicial review itself did not originate in India. It was first articulated in the United States in Marbury v. Madison (1803), where Chief Justice John Marshall asserted the American Supreme Court's power to examine the constitutionality of laws. India's Constitution, unlike its American counterpart, expressly confers this power on the higher judiciary through Articles 32, 136, 226 and 227, and the Supreme Court has since read it as an implicit basic feature that even a constitutional amendment cannot remove.

Consequences for Tribunals Today

After 1997, every order of the CAT and comparable tribunals set up under Articles 323A and 323B became appealable before the concerned High Court's Division Bench rather than directly before the Supreme Court. This significantly increased the caseload before High Courts, prompting the Law Commission of India, in its 215th Report (December 2008), to recommend that the Supreme Court reconsider its position in L. Chandra Kumar. Separately, the Administrative Tribunals (Amendment) Bill, 2006 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in March 2006 to align the Act with the judgment, including provisions empowering the Central Government to abolish tribunals and formalising the appeal route to the High Court.

UPSC Relevance

Prelims

• L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997) was decided by a seven-judge Bench and held clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B unconstitutional to the extent they excluded High Court and Supreme Court jurisdiction.
• Articles 323A and 323B were inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976.
• The doctrine of judicial review originated in the US case Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Mains

• Judicial review as a basic-structure feature and its extension to tribunal jurisdiction (GS2 — Constitution, judiciary).
• Trace the evolution from S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987) to L. Chandra Kumar (1997) to explain how the balance between tribunalisation and constitutional court oversight was struck.
• Evaluate the institutional consequences of routing tribunal appeals through High Courts, including caseload concerns flagged by the Law Commission.

FAQ

Q1. What did the Supreme Court decide in the L. Chandra Kumar case? It held that provisions in Articles 323A and 323B (and laws made under them) excluding the jurisdiction of the High Courts under Articles 226/227 and the Supreme Court under Article 32 are unconstitutional, because judicial review is part of the basic structure.

Q2. Which bench decided the case, and when? A seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered under then Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi in 1997.

Q3. How are tribunal orders challenged today as a result of this case? An aggrieved party must first approach the Division Bench of the High Court having jurisdiction over the tribunal, rather than going directly to the Supreme Court.

Q4. How does this case relate to the basic structure doctrine? It applies the basic-structure reasoning of Kesavananda Bharati (1973) and Minerva Mills (1980) — that judicial review is an unamendable feature of the Constitution — to ordinary tribunal legislation, not just constitutional amendments.

Q5. What was the position before this judgment? Under S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987), the Supreme Court's Article 32 jurisdiction over tribunal orders had been restored, but the High Courts' Article 226/227 jurisdiction remained excluded until 1997.

Quick Revision

• 1976 (42nd Amendment): Articles 323A and 323B inserted; courts' jurisdiction over tribunal matters made excludable.
• 1985: Administrative Tribunals Act sets up CAT under Article 323A.
• 1987: S.P. Sampath Kumar upholds the Act but restores only the Supreme Court's Article 32 jurisdiction.
• 1997: L. Chandra Kumar (7-judge Bench) strikes down the exclusion of High Court jurisdiction; judicial review declared part of the basic structure.
• Effect: Tribunal orders now appealable to the jurisdictional High Court's Division Bench before any further appeal.

Sources

• Constitution of India, Articles 323A, 323B, 226, 227 and 32 — https://legislative.gov.in/constitution-of-india/
• Supreme Court of India, L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, AIR 1997 SC 1125 — official judgment records via https://main.sci.gov.in/
• Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 — https://legislative.gov.in/

Further Reference

For deeper reading on this topic and the wider polity syllabus, these standard works are recommended:

• M. Laxmikanth, Indian Polity (McGraw Hill) — the standard UPSC handbook.
• D.D. Basu, Introduction to the Constitution of India (LexisNexis) — authoritative constitutional-law treatment.
• The Constitution of India — Bare Act — the official text.