Introduction

Constitutional and statutory bodies constitute the institutional backbone of India’s democratic governance. Envisioned as independent, specialised, and rule-bound institutions, they were designed to uphold constitutional values such as accountability, federalism, separation of powers, and protection of rights. Over the decades—particularly in the post-liberalisation and contemporary governance era—the nature, role, and functioning of these bodies have undergone significant transformation. The changes reflect evolving state priorities, administrative reforms, technological advances, and political contestations. While some reforms aim at efficiency and responsiveness, others raise concerns regarding autonomy, centralisation, and democratic safeguards.

Traditional Character of Constitutional and Statutory Bodies

At the time of their creation, constitutional and statutory bodies shared certain defining characteristics:

1. Institutional Autonomy – insulation from day-to-day political control
2. Functional Specialisation – domain-specific expertise
3. Continuity and Stability – long tenures and security of office
4. Checks and Balances – acting as restraints on executive excess
5. Public Trust – credibility derived from neutrality and professionalism

For instance, the Election Commission ensured free and fair elections, while the Planning Commission (though not constitutional) guided long-term economic planning.

Forces Driving Change

The changing nature of these bodies can be attributed to multiple structural and political factors:

• Expansion of the regulatory state after economic liberalisation
• Increasing complexity of governance (environment, finance, technology)
• Demand for faster decision-making and outcome-based governance
• Rise of strong executive leadership
• Judicial activism and constitutional reinterpretation
• Federal and Centre–State tensions

These pressures have redefined both how these bodies are structured and how they function.

Major Dimensions of Change

1. From Command-and-Control to Advisory and Coordinative Roles

A significant transformation in India’s institutional architecture is the shift from directive, command-oriented bodies to advisory and facilitative institutions. This change is exemplified by the replacement of the Planning Commission with NITI Aayog. The Planning Commission, which was established through an executive resolution rather than by the Constitution, was abolished and replaced by NITI Aayog, conceived as a policy think tank and coordination platform. The government argued that this transition would create a more flexible institution oriented towards cooperative federalism, moving away from centralised “command-and-control” planning. NITI Aayog was thus envisioned to promote cooperative and competitive federalism instead of enforcing centrally determined plan targets.

Criticisms

• “Toothless without money” argument: Since NITI Aayog does not possess financial allocation powers, critics contend that it lacks the capacity to perform the strong coordination role once exercised by the Planning Commission. Consequently, fiscal authority has increasingly shifted to the Ministry of Finance, which arguably centralises discretion rather than strengthening cooperative federalism.
• Mixed federal outcomes in practice: Although NITI Aayog’s design emphasises cooperative and competitive federalism, critics argue that the Centre’s continued control over key fiscal instruments often converts cooperation into conditional compliance by the States.
• Transition challenges: Even members of NITI Aayog’s leadership have acknowledged initial transition-related frictions and institutional ambiguity during the shift from the Planning Commission.

While NITI Aayog has strengthened policy analytics, data dashboards, performance indices, and inter-ministerial coordination, the removal of a powerful planning-cum-fiscal authority has arguably created a vacuum in long-term intergovernmental bargaining. As a result, comprehensive planning has been partially displaced by scheme-driven budgeting—a classic illustration of the capacity versus authority trade-off.

Although this transformation aligns with market-oriented governance and greater state-level flexibility, critics caution that advisory bodies lacking fiscal authority risk becoming largely symbolic rather than substantive, thereby weakening the institutional capacity for coherent long-term planning.

2. Increasing Executive Influence

A major concern in recent reforms is the growing role of the executive in appointments, tenure, and service conditions of constitutional and statutory bodies. Reforms relating to tribunals, regulatory commissions, and even constitutional authorities have altered appointment mechanisms and reduced tenure lengths.

Implications:

• Potential erosion of independence
• Risk of regulatory capture
• Reduced willingness to act against the government

The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasised that institutional independence is a basic feature of the Constitution, especially for adjudicatory and oversight bodies.

3. Judicial Reforms, NJAC, and Tribunalisation in India

One of the most significant institutional reform attempts under the NDA government was the proposal to replace the judicial collegium system with the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). This reform was introduced through the 99th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2014, along with the NJAC Act, 2014. The stated aim was to create a broader and more participatory system for appointing judges to the higher judiciary. However, in 2015, the Supreme Court of India struck down both the amendment and the Act, restoring the collegium system.

The NJAC debate highlighted a fundamental constitutional tension: how to balance judicial independence with democratic accountability. The collegium system, which gives judges the primary role in appointing other judges, is designed to protect the judiciary from political interference. At the same time, it has been criticised for being opaque, unaccountable, and lacking clearly defined procedures. The NJAC was proposed as a response to these criticisms.

However, legal scholars identified several serious weaknesses in the design of the NJAC. The composition of the Commission allowed the executive a significant role in judicial appointments. The veto provision enabled even non-judicial members to block appointments, potentially paralysing the process. The category of “eminent persons” was vaguely defined, raising concerns about political influence. Moreover, parts of the system could be altered through ordinary legislation, despite dealing with a core constitutional function. Together, these flaws raised fears that the NJAC could compromise judicial independence.

Importantly, the Supreme Court’s decision did not declare the collegium system to be perfect. Instead, the judgment is often seen as part of an ongoing constitutional dialogue between the judiciary, legislature, and executive. The Court rejected the NJAC mainly because of its structural defects and risks to independence, not because judicial reform itself was unacceptable. As a result, the broader question of how to reform judicial appointments in a transparent yet independent manner remains unresolved.

Alongside the NJAC debate, the NDA government also introduced wide-ranging reforms in the tribunal system. These reforms aimed to rationalise tribunals by merging overlapping bodies, abolishing some tribunals, and changing appointment procedures and service conditions. The Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 became the central instrument for these changes.

Tribunals deal with important legal rights and often function as substitutes for High Courts in specialised areas such as taxation, company law, and environmental protection. Because tribunals are created by the executive, safeguards related to tenure, appointments, and removal are crucial to protect their independence. The Supreme Court repeatedly struck down key provisions of tribunal reform laws, including parts of the 2021 Act, on the ground that they undermined judicial independence and violated the principle of separation of powers.

The Parliamentary Research Service noted the Court’s concerns regarding short and renewable tenures, executive-dominated selection committees, and service conditions that could pressure tribunal members. Judicial records also show the Court’s dissatisfaction with Parliament repeatedly reintroducing provisions that had already been declared unconstitutional.

These reforms have changed the nature of tribunals in important ways. There has been a gradual shift from constitutionally established courts to executive-created adjudicatory bodies, frequent restructuring and mergers, and continued disputes over appointments and service conditions. While some rationalisation was necessary to address delays and overlapping jurisdictions, the manner in which reforms were carried out has raised serious concerns.

Tribunalisation does offer advantages. It promotes technical expertise, faster resolution of cases, and reduces the burden on regular courts. Bodies such as the National Green Tribunal demonstrate the potential benefits of specialised justice. However, excessive executive control has created a credibility problem. Tribunals increasingly risk being viewed as administrative extensions of the executive rather than independent courts.

In conclusion, both the NJAC episode and tribunal reforms reflect a deeper constitutional struggle over who controls institutions meant to check power. While reform is necessary to improve efficiency and transparency, reforms that weaken independence in the name of accountability can upset the constitutional balance. The real challenge for Indian democracy lies in designing institutions that are both independent and accountable, without allowing one principle to dominate the other.

4. Centralisation vs Federal Autonomy

Several recent institutional reforms have significantly reshaped Centre–State relations in India. While many of these reforms were introduced with the stated objective of strengthening governance, accountability, or social justice, their structural design has at times recalibrated the federal balance, often in subtle and unintended ways. In particular, the constitutionalisation of certain commissions and the redesign of fiscal and regulatory institutions have affected the autonomy of States in areas traditionally regarded as falling within their legislative and administrative competence.

A prominent example is the constitutionalisation of the National Commission for Backward Classes through the 102nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 2018. By inserting Article 338B and related provisions, the NDA government elevated the NCBC from a statutory body to a constitutional authority, thereby strengthening its institutional status, independence, and national role. Unlike reforms such as the replacement of the Planning Commission by NITI Aayog or the restructuring of sectoral regulators like the National Medical Commission, this reform directly altered the constitutional architecture rather than merely executive or statutory arrangements.

At the normative level, the amendment was presented as a progressive step aimed at ensuring stronger safeguards for socially and educationally backward classes and providing a uniform institutional mechanism for monitoring welfare measures. However, the constitutional design of the amendment soon generated federal tensions, particularly regarding the division of powers between the Union and the States in identifying Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs).

Subsequent constitutional interpretation raised concerns that the power to identify backward classes—long exercised by States under their respective socio-historical contexts—had been effectively centralised. This led to ambiguity over whether States retained concurrent or independent authority to notify SEBCs for the purposes of State-level reservations. The controversy culminated in judicial clarification and eventually required a further constitutional amendment to restore States’ powers, illustrating how a reform intended to strengthen a commission inadvertently constrained State autonomy.

This episode highlights a broader pattern in recent governance reforms: institutional strengthening at the national level can produce asymmetrical federal outcomes if constitutional design does not adequately account for India’s quasi-federal structure. When commissions are constitutionalised or regulatory frameworks are standardised nationally, States may find their policy space narrowed—not through explicit exclusion, but through indirect constitutional and administrative consequences.

Similar concerns arise in relation to centrally designed performance indices, benchmarking frameworks, and outcome-based governance tools. While such instruments promote transparency, comparability, and efficiency, they also shape State policy priorities by aligning incentives with centrally determined criteria. Over time, this can result in a form of soft centralisation, where States formally retain powers but substantively adjust policies to conform to Union-defined metrics.

Taken together, these developments point to an evolving form of asymmetric federalism, in which the Centre’s role in norm-setting, institutional design, and constitutional restructuring increasingly influences State action. The NCBC episode serves as a cautionary example: reforms framed as institutional empowerment must be carefully calibrated to preserve the constitutional balance between unity and diversity. In a federal polity like India, strengthening national institutions should not come at the cost of diminishing the States’ constitutionally recognised role as laboratories of social policy and governance innovation.

5. Performance Metrics and Outcome Orientation

A notable transformation in contemporary public administration is the growing adoption of data-driven governance. Governments increasingly rely on rankings, indices, dashboards, and performance audits to evaluate institutions and public programmes. Instead of focusing primarily on procedural compliance—such as whether rules were followed—institutions are now assessed on measurable outcomes, targets achieved, and performance indicators. This shift reflects a broader attempt to make governance more transparent, accountable, and results-oriented.

One of the most visible outcomes of data-driven governance is greater transparency. Public dashboards and indices place information in the public domain, enabling citizens, researchers, and policymakers to track government performance. This openness can reduce arbitrariness and improve trust in public institutions. Another important effect is inter-state competition. Rankings encourage States to improve their performance relative to others, fostering innovation and administrative efficiency. Institutions such as NITI Aayog have actively promoted this approach through various national indices, aiming to stimulate cooperative and competitive federalism. Additionally, data-driven tools support evidence-based policymaking, allowing governments to design interventions based on measurable needs and outcomes rather than intuition or political considerations.

However, this transformation also raises important concerns. A key limitation is the oversimplification of complex social realities. Many social outcomes—such as educational quality, social inclusion, or environmental sustainability—are difficult to capture fully through numerical indicators. Reducing governance to a set of metrics may overlook local contexts and qualitative dimensions of development. There is also the risk of incentive distortion, where institutions focus narrowly on improving measured indicators rather than addressing underlying problems. This can lead to short-term, cosmetic improvements instead of meaningful, long-term change.

Furthermore, an excessive emphasis on quantifiable outcomes may result in the marginalisation of non-measurable goals such as equity, justice, and social cohesion. These values lie at the heart of democratic governance but often resist easy measurement. When success is defined mainly through numbers, policies may prioritise efficiency over fairness, leaving vulnerable groups inadequately represented in decision-making.

In conclusion, data-driven governance has the potential to enhance transparency, competition, and rational policymaking. Yet, it must be used with caution. Metrics and indices should complement—not replace—context-sensitive judgment, ethical considerations, and constitutional values. A balanced approach that combines quantitative tools with qualitative understanding is essential to ensure that governance remains both effective and just.

Scholarly and Political Critiques

In recent years, reforms relating to constitutional and statutory bodies in India have generated intense debate among scholars, jurists, and opposition leaders. While the government has justified these reforms as necessary for improving efficiency and accountability, critics argue that they have raised serious constitutional and democratic concerns.

One of the most frequently expressed concerns is the dilution of the independence of constitutional bodies. Institutions such as commissions, regulators, and tribunals were originally designed to function at arm’s length from the executive. Critics argue that changes in appointment procedures, tenure conditions, and service rules have increased executive influence, thereby weakening the autonomy that is essential for these bodies to perform their oversight and adjudicatory roles effectively.

Related to this is the charge of majoritarian executive dominance. Opponents contend that a strong executive, backed by a parliamentary majority, has increasingly shaped institutional design in ways that reduce checks and balances. This trend, they argue, risks converting independent institutions into extensions of the executive, undermining the principle of separation of powers.

Another concern is the weakening of institutional memory due to short tenures. Frequent restructuring and reduced tenure periods for members of commissions and tribunals limit continuity and expertise. Institutional memory, which is crucial for consistent decision-making and long-term policy understanding, may be lost when experienced members are replaced too quickly.

Critics have also highlighted the re-enactment of laws previously struck down by courts. When legislatures reintroduce provisions that have already been declared unconstitutional, it raises questions about respect for judicial authority and constitutional discipline. Jurists view this practice as reopening settled constitutional issues and creating avoidable institutional conflict.

Further, scholars argue that some reforms have undermined established constitutional conventions without formal constitutional amendments. Conventions, though unwritten, play a vital role in sustaining democratic governance. Altering them through ordinary legislation or executive action, without wider consensus, is seen as weakening constitutional morality.

On the other hand, proponents of these reforms present a contrasting view. They argue that many legacy institutions had become opaque, inefficient, and insufficiently accountable. According to this perspective, reforms were necessary to address delays, improve performance, and align institutions with contemporary governance needs. From this standpoint, increased executive involvement is portrayed not as control, but as coordination and responsibility.

In conclusion, the debate reflects a fundamental tension in constitutional governance: the need to reform institutions without eroding their independence. While reform is essential to address inefficiency and lack of accountability, it must be carried out in a manner that preserves institutional autonomy, respects constitutional conventions, and maintains public trust. The challenge lies not in choosing between reform and independence, but in achieving a careful balance between the two.

Judicial Response

In recent years, the Supreme Court of India has emerged as a key arbiter in shaping and regulating the transformation of constitutional and statutory institutions in India. As governance reforms have altered the structure, functioning, and control of bodies such as tribunals and regulatory authorities, the judiciary has played a crucial role in ensuring that these changes remain within constitutional limits.

One of the most important contributions of the Supreme Court has been its consistent defence of the independence of tribunals. Since tribunals often adjudicate significant statutory and constitutional rights and function as substitutes for High Courts in specialised areas, the Court has emphasised that they must enjoy safeguards similar to those of the regular judiciary. Through a series of judgments, the Court has struck down provisions that allowed excessive executive control over tribunal members, particularly in matters of tenure, reappointment, and service conditions.

Closely linked to this is the Court’s reaffirmation of the doctrine of separation of powers. The judiciary has repeatedly held that while Parliament has the authority to create and reform institutions, it cannot design adjudicatory bodies in a manner that undermines judicial independence. Executive dominance in appointment processes or administrative control over tribunals has been viewed as incompatible with the constitutional balance among the legislature, executive, and judiciary.

The Supreme Court has also laid down guidelines for appointments to tribunals and other adjudicatory bodies. These guidelines aim to ensure transparency, security of tenure, and a meaningful role for the judiciary in selection committees. By doing so, the Court has sought to prevent politicisation and preserve public confidence in adjudicatory institutions.

Underlying these interventions is the Court’s emphasis on constitutional morality. The judiciary has asserted that institutional design must not merely comply with the letter of the law but must also respect the spirit of the Constitution, including values such as independence, fairness, and accountability. Constitutional morality, in this sense, acts as a guiding principle for evaluating governance reforms.

However, the frequency of litigation in this area also reveals a trust deficit between the branches of government. Repeated judicial intervention, often against similar legislative provisions reintroduced in different forms, suggests ongoing tension and lack of consensus over institutional boundaries. While the judiciary views its role as protecting constitutional values, the legislature and executive often perceive such interventions as judicial overreach.

In conclusion, the judiciary has played a decisive role in moderating institutional change and safeguarding constitutional principles. At the same time, persistent conflicts highlight the need for greater dialogue and cooperation among the branches of government to ensure that reforms strengthen, rather than strain, India’s constitutional framework.

Conclusion

Constitutional and statutory bodies are not mere administrative instruments; they are guardians of constitutional democracy. Their evolution must therefore be guided by transparency, consensus, and constitutional values. Reforms should strengthen—not subordinate—them. A mature democracy demands institutions that are independent yet accountable, flexible yet stable, and powerful yet restrained. The challenge before India is not whether to reform these bodies, but how to reform them without eroding the constitutional soul of governance.