Judicial Review of the National Sports Tribunal: Rethinking Deference in Light of Legislative Ambiguity

Param Khandekar*

Introduction 

India recently enacted the National Sports Governance Act (“the Act”), reforming its sports governance framework. The Act introduces a specialised dispute resolution framework for sports-related disputes. Under Chapter IX, the Act establishes National Sports Tribunals (“NSTs”), whose decisions are appealable either to the Supreme Court or, where applicable, to the Court of Arbitration for Sport under Section 25. While the Act establishes the institutional framework for sports adjudication, it leaves unresolved a foundational question about the role of constitutional courts in reviewing these decisions.

That question assumes particular importance because sports disputes often sit at the intersection of regulatory expertise and individual rights. Decisions regarding athlete eligibility, disciplinary sanctions, anti-doping violations, or selection procedures frequently involve highly technical assessments that courts are institutionally ill-equipped to reconsider on the merits. At the same time, such decisions may also implicate constitutional individual rights. 

This post argues that while NST qualifies as an administrative tribunal, it does not function as one due to legislative ambiguity in defining its jurisdiction. Therefore, the general principles of administrative law that apply when reviewing tribunal decisions should not apply to NST.  It first briefly lays down the principles of administrative law regarding the judicial review of the administrative tribunals, with the rationale. It then demonstrates why these principles cannot apply to NST. It concludes with a possible solution to tackle this problem. 

Judicial Review of Tribunals in India 

Before discussing the possibility of judicial review of NST decisions, it must first be seen whether NST is an administrative tribunal. 

In Associated Cement Companies Ltd. v. P.N. Sharma (“P.N. Sharma”), the Supreme Court laid down the following characteristics for determining whether a tribunal is an administrative tribunal:  a) it must be constituted under a statute; b) it must exercise adjudicatory functions in relation to disputes of a specific or specialised nature; c) its decisions must be final and binding in the first instance; d) it must be invested with the trappings of judicial power, including the power to summon, take evidence, and impose consequences; and e) its procedure must be governed by the parent statute rather than the Code of Civil Procedure.

The Act establishes NST under Section 17, with the goal of such tribunals being ‘to provide for the independent, speedy, effective and cost-efficient disposal of sports-related disputes.’ These are intended to be specialised tribunals to resolve sports law disputes.  The tribunals have powers similar to those of a civil court (Section 24) and assume jurisdiction over all civil cases involving sporting bodies (Section 22). The decisions of the tribunal are appealable to the SC, except when an appeal lies to the Court of Arbitration of Sports (Section 25). Section 25 specifically raises the question of what kind of judicial review the SC should employ when reviewing tribunals’ decisions on appeal. Therefore, NST fulfills all the categories outlined by P.N. Sharma.

Any such tribunal’s decision cannot escape judicial review, because judicial review is part of the basic structure of the constitution, as laid down in S.P. Sampath Kumar v. Union of India and later affirmed in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India.  When conducting such a review, courts apply two standards of judicial review: primary and secondary review. 

Primary review is conducted when a decision directly infringes on an individual’s constitutional rights. In such a case, courts can review the entire decision, including the outcome reached by the administrative tribunals, under the proportionality framework first discussed in Om Kumar v. Union of India. 

Secondary review is more limited in scope. It does not permit a full review, unlike the primary review. As held in Surya Dev Rai v. Ram Chander Rai, it only allows the court to review whether the administrative body’s decision was in accordance with certain procedural grounds. Some of these grounds, which were listed in  Tata Cellular v. Union of India, include jurisdictional excess, refusal to exercise jurisdiction, breach of natural justice, and error apparent on the face of the record.

Courts do not conduct a primary review of tribunal decisions. This is because the decisions made by the tribunals often involve specific subject-matter expertise that the courts lack. Therefore, the courts usually conduct a secondary review of the tribunal decisions. This has been upheld across several cases. In Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education v. Paritosh Bhupesh Kumar Sheth, it was held that courts should exercise extreme restraint before questioning the wisdom of decisions made by bodies entrusted with specialised domains. In Competition Commission of India v. Steel Authority of India, the Court held that a specialist statutory body with a focused mandate justifies reduced judicial review intensity, while process review remains fully available. In Cellular Operators Association of India v. TRAI, the Court held that where a legislature has deliberately chosen to resolve disputes through an expert body, courts should be slow to substitute their judgment on technical findings.

The Appropriate Standard for Reviewing NST Decisions and the Problem of Legislative Ambiguity

Based on this jurisprudence, the question now arises whether the SC should conduct a primary or secondary review of the NST decisions.

The answer seems simple at first glance. Since the NST is an expert body established to resolve sports-related disputes, the SC should treat it as any other expert body and conduct only a secondary review on limited procedural grounds. The court will always conduct a primary proportionality review of NST's decisions if they infringe a constitutional right. 

However, the case of NST is not so straightforward. The above-mentioned standard of review is based on the presumption that NST exercises sports expertise while giving its decisions. Yet the NST may not always exercise a sports expertise while adjudicating under the scheme of the act. 

The Act, while establishing NST, gives it powers equivalent to those of a civil court to adjudicate all matters within its scope. However, the act itself does not explain what this scope is. Instead, it prescribes that all disputes that involve sporting federations/associations as parties be transferred to the NST (Sec 22). Therefore, NST’s subject-matter jurisdiction is not based on expertise. It exercises jurisdiction over all matters involving sporting bodies in India as parties. 

This broad jurisdiction of NST raises a problem regarding the application of administrative law principles of judicial review to it. The standard practice of judicial deference to tribunal decisions and secondary review assumes that the tribunal has exercised its technical expertise while rendering the decision. However, with such broad jurisdiction, NST may decide disputes that require no specialised sports expertise. For instance, a dispute can arise because a sporting federation breached an ordinary contract. In this case, NST will have jurisdiction because the sporting body is a party involved. However, it will base its decision on general principles of contract law and their interpretation, which, per se, do not require any special technical expertise. In this case, it would not be appropriate for the court to accord NST the usual deference given to tribunals by applying secondary review, because no specialised technical expertise was used in the decision-making. 

The Act also pre-empts NST’s jurisdiction on several statutory grounds (Section 20). For example, doping disputes are a special category of disputes that do require special sports expertise. However, under Section 20(c) of the Act, such disputes are beyond NST’s jurisdiction. Similarly, different sport-specific disputes require expertise in the relevant sport.  However, under Section 20(b), any dispute that falls within the jurisdiction of the internal dispute resolution committee of a National Sports body (e.g., AIFF Ethics & Dispute Resolution Committee) is beyond NST’s jurisdiction. Therefore, such categories of disputes requiring sporting expertise will not be heard by NST. 

At the same time, disputes challenging athlete selections for a particular sporting event (See Manjit Singh v. Sports Authority of India & Anr.) or disputes requiring interpretation of sporting bodies’ constitutions (See All India Football Federation v. Rahul Mehra) can be heard by the NST. These disputes do require sports expertise during adjudication. Therefore, there is uncertainty as to whether NST will exercise special expertise in all its matters. 

Because of such uncertainty, it would not be appropriate to apply the general principle of administrative law to require courts to conduct a secondary review of all NST decisions. Rather, given the uncertainty about what constitutes sporting disputes and the fact that a chunk of sports disputes requiring expertise are not subject to NST (as they will be resolved through the dispute resolution mechanism of the specific sports federation), it should be assumed that NST is functioning more like a court designated for sport-related disputes than a specialised tribunal. Therefore, the court should not assume a secondary judicial review standard for NST decisions. 

Conclusion

The argument that NST is functionally not a specialised tribunal is based on the ambiguity defining what constitutes ‘sports-related disputes’ that fall within its jurisdiction. This piece has sought to demonstrate that sports-related disputes within NST's jurisdiction may or may not require the exercise of sporting expertise, and that such disputes may not require NST to exercise special sporting expertise. 

If the current broad definition of ‘sports-related disputes’ is amended or subsequently clarified to narrow it down to limited categories of disputes that require NST to exercise its special sporting expertise, NST will function as a specialised administrative tribunal. In such a case, the appropriate standard would be secondary review, except when constitutional rights are involved. 

As of now, though, courts should not accord NST special deference. Instead, it should treat NST as a lower court and exercise its power of judicial review accordingly. This can be subject to an exception where the case involves the actual exercise of NST's special expertise, which the court should consider on a case-by-case basis.

*Param Khandekar is a fourth-year law student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

The views expressed above are the author's alone and do not represent the beliefs of Pith & Substance: The CCAL Blog.