The Prime Minister's Office is planning to reduce the list of all important national tribunals and merge some of them to create larger entities which can ensure efficiency. There are 35 national tribunals under different ministries, including the prime corporate arbiter, the Company Law Board, politically sensitive Cauvery Water Tribunal, bureaucracy's grievance redressal mechanism, the Central Administrative Tribunal, etc. Law Secretary PK Malhotra wrote, "There is a possibility of some of these tribunals can be converged / merged to avoid overlapping / identical functions being discharged by these tribunals.

Malhotra noted that PMO wants all the ministries and departments to have a relook at these quasi-judicial tribunals functioning under their administrative control to "examine the possibility of merging these tribunals” and the law secretary has asked ministries to identify tribunals that could be clubbed together. The law ministry has set a deadline of March 5 for the exercise. A "proforma" has been sent to each ministry to answer questions about the functioning of the tribunal: "From what date has the tribunal started functioning? What is subject matter jurisdiction of the tribunal? How many benches of the tribunal have been sanctioned by the government? etc. "The powers which are normally vested in the courts were conferred upon these tribunals for quick justice based on the principle of natural justice and also to reduce burden on the regular courts."

By Premji