Towards a tribunal services agency

Abstract

The performance of Indian tribunals has been unsatisfactory. Yet, policy-makers continue to rely heavily on tribunals to achieve their end objective. One example of this are the tribunals which will adjudicate in the proposed Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2015. This is premised on the assumption that the tribunals will be able to dispose of cases within hard deadlines. A natural key question that arises is how Indian tribunals can perform better in this matter when they cannot in others? This paper proposes that administrative functions of tribunals should be hived off into a separate agency – Tribunal Services Agency - which will help improve the performance of the administrative functions of tribunals and, in turn, improve their judicial functioning in general.