Tribunal bench composition must preserve judicial predominance, and Administrative Members cannot outnumber Judicial Members in larger benches.

Section 5 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, as applied to larger benches of the Central Administrative Tribunal, requires every such bench to include at least one Judicial Member and one Administrative Member. Read with the statutory scheme governing tribunal composition and judicial review, the provision is construed to preserve meaningful judicial predominance where substantial questions of law are decided. On that construction, a Full Bench of more than two members cannot be constituted so that Administrative Members outnumber Judicial Members, and a reconstituted bench must comply with the statutory requirement of adequate judicial representation.

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Issues: Whether, in a Full Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal constituted under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, the number of Administrative Members can exceed the number of Judicial Members.

Analysis: The constitutional and statutory scheme for administrative tribunals, together with the line of authority on judicial review and the nature of tribunal adjudication, shows that tribunals are intended to function as effective adjudicatory substitutes within the limits recognised by law, but not as bodies dominated by non-judicial expertise when substantial questions of law arise. The statutory framework in Section 5 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, especially Section 5(4)(d) and its proviso, permits constitution of benches with more than two members but expressly requires that every such bench include at least one Judicial Member and one Administrative Member. Reading that proviso in the context of the scheme of the Act and the development of law on tribunal composition, the presence of a Judicial Member is not ornamental, and the statute does not contemplate a larger bench being numerically dominated by Administrative Members.

Conclusion: A Full Bench of more than two Members cannot be constituted with Administrative Members outnumbering Judicial Members.

Final Conclusion: The impugned refusal to reconstitute the Full Bench could not stand, and the matter had to go back for constitution of a bench conforming to the statutory requirement of adequate judicial representation.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute requires every larger tribunal bench to include at least one Judicial Member and one Administrative Member, the provision must be construed to preserve meaningful judicial predominance in the adjudication of substantial legal questions and to exclude a composition in which Administrative Members outnumber Judicial Members.

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