Administrative Tribunals in Bangladesh

Investigating Legal and Factual Challenges, and Remedies in Proper Dispensation of Justice

Abstract

Administrative Tribunal in Bangladesh is a specialized adjudicating body established in order to ensure prompt, effective, inexpensive, flexible, and expert adjudication as well as expeditious disposal of service disputes of civil servants by ousting the jurisdiction of ordinary courts on such matter. However, this paper tries to explore that the adjudicating mechanism of such Tribunals are affected by intricate legislation, non-compliance to the Constitutional mandate, deviation from equality principles, unavailability of a dynamic procedure as to the recruitment of personnel of expertise, non-existence of any established system of appointing panel advocate, a variety of the jurisdictional lacking and faults as well as functional and procedural defects. To explore challenges related to the Administrative Tribunals in Bangladesh, this paper attempts to examine whether the legal provisions of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1980 and Rules framed thereunder are adequate for the proper and expeditious disposal of the service litigants' grievances through the critical analysis of these provisions compared to, especially, that of India and Pakistan as well as the empirical scrutiny of the practical scenario of such Tribunals in Bangladesh. This paper, in fine, concludes with the necessity for serious modifications of those legal provisions and tackling those challenges, and therefore puts forward the ways out.