Report No. 272

E. 124th Report of Law Commission of India, 1988

4.9 The Commission in its Report titled 'The High Court Arrears - A Fresh Look' made various recommendations observing:

'It is here a germ for the first time of creating specialist Tribunals as alternatives to the High Court with a view to curtailing the jurisdiction of the High Court to control the inflow of work which may indirectly help in tackling the problem of arrears and backlog of cases.

The Law Commission is of the firm view that, wherever possible, proliferating appellate and wide original jurisdiction should be controlled or curtailed without impairing the quality of justice.

To sum up, the approach of the commission is to reduce number of appeals, to set up specialist courts/tribunals, simultaneously eliminating the jurisdiction of the High Court which, when translated into action by implementing the reports submitted by the present Law Commission, would, on a very superficial assessment, reduce the inflow of work into the High Court by nearly 45% of its present inflow.'

4.10 In support of its recommendations for establishing the specialised Courts/Tribunals, the Commission made reference to the position prevalent in Australia observing:

'Tribunals outside the established courts have been created - Administrative Appeal Tribunals, Arbitration Tribunals, Workers' Compensation Tribunals, Pension Tribunals, Planning Appeal Tribunal, Equal Opportunity Tribunals, etc. This activity of creating Tribunals is founded on a belief that the established Courts are too remote, too legalistic, too expensive and, above all too slow.'