Tribunals were created to ease the burden on regular courts and ensure faster justice. Yet a recent assessment by the law ministry shows these specialised bodies are themselves struggling under a massive backlog of over 5.24 lakh cases — a pile-up officials largely attribute to widespread vacancies in key posts.
The Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) and its appellate body account for the largest share, with around 2.5 lakh pending matters. They are followed by the Customs & Excise Appellate Tribunal (72,000 cases), the Central Administrative Tribunal (69,000), the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (43,000), State Administrative Tribunals (28,940), the Armed Forces Tribunal (6,900), and the National Green Tribunal (5,301).
According to a law ministry statement tabled in Parliament last week, seven tribunals — including the Central Government Industrial Tribunal, the Customs & Excise Appellate Tribunal, the Appellate Tribunal for SFEMA, the DRT and DRAT, the Railway Claims Tribunal, and the Armed Forces Tribunal — are currently functioning without a chairperson. Nearly 18% of all member posts remain vacant, with 93 positions unfilled out of a sanctioned strength of 518.
Addressing the Rajya Sabha on December 4, law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said delays vary significantly across tribunals due to the complexity of cases, multiple procedural stages, and frequent re-hearings. He added that the government is making “all efforts” to adhere to timelines for filling vacancies. “The occurrence of vacancies and filling them is a continuous process,” he noted.
To improve disposal rates, tribunals are also adopting a range of measures, including hybrid and e-court systems, capacity-building programmes for members, prioritisation of cases involving senior citizens, and fast-tracking matters already settled by High Courts or the Supreme Court.
Despite these steps, the growing backlog underscores the systemic challenges tribunals face in fulfilling their mandate of delivering swift justice.
