New Delhi: Several provisions of the 2021 Tribunals Reforms Act are unconstitutional as they violate judicial independence and the separation of powers, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday (November 19), recalling that these were “slightly altered” versions of clauses it had already examined and invalidated.“Instead of curing the defects identified and struck down by this court,” the 2021 Act “just reproduces them in slightly altered form … such an approach is impermissible under our current constitutional scheme,” a bench of Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran said.The bench also directed the Union government, the respondent in the matter, to constitute within four months a National Tribunals Commission tasked with ensuring that the country’s tribunals work independently and transparently.Tribunals are judicial or quasi-judicial institutions that are set up to help ease the judiciary’s case load or to provide expertise on certain topics.Wednesday’s order came in a petition by the Madras Bar Association challenging the 2021 law on the grounds that it reintroduced provisions the court had previously struck down, including while hearing a challenge against the Tribunals Reforms Ordinance that was promulgated before the Act was passed.Among the provisions under challenge were those requiring that members and chairpersons of tribunals be at least 50 years old; limiting the tenure of members and chairpersons to four years; mandating that search-and-selection committees for tribunals recommend two names to the government for each vacancy as opposed to just one; and equating allowances and benefits for members and chairpersons to those of civil servants at the same pay level.These provisions “have already been judicially tested and struck down” and “expressly held” to be “arbitrary” as well as “destructive of judicial independence”, the bench said.Enacting them anyway amounts to an “attempt to nullify binding judicial directions without addressing the underlying constitutional infirmities”, thereby “[falling] afoul of the doctrine of constitutional supremacy”, it added.In its arguments the Union government contended that the judiciary cannot compel the legislature to enact specific laws or do so in a particular way.“Similarly, non-compliance with judicial directions that intrude into the policy-making space of the legislature cannot attract contempt, because the authority to frame rules is vested in the executive and parliament”, read a paraphrasing of the attorney general’s arguments in the judgment.However, the bench rejected the idea that its earlier directions regarding the provisions in question were merely ‘suggestions’ and that parliament can diverge from them in line with its policy-making powers.Separation of powers and judicial independence are “justiciable constitutional principles” and matters in which the court “cannot defer to ‘policy’ in the same way as in economic or commercial regulation”, the court said.It also took a dim view of the fact that it had to hear the matter despite having ruled on these provisions before.“In a judicial system already burdened with a staggering pendency … the continued recurrence of such issues consumes valuable judicial time that could otherwise be devoted to adjudicating matters of pressing public and constitutional importance,” the court said.Notably, this case is also one in which the chief justice had twice chided the government for ‘attempting to avoid’ his bench.“We have accommodated you twice already. How many more? If you want it after November 24, tell us then,” Bar and Bench had quoted Justice Gavai as saying earlier this month in response to the government’s request for adjournment. The top judge is scheduled to demit office on November 24.