Close reading of the decisions that matter: the facts, the holding, the ratio, and what it changes for the practitioner — with the citation kept front and centre.
The Supreme Court held that a writ under Article 226 lies against the IBA over its RBI-mandated Caution List, and that an advocate's alleged professional negligence — as opposed to fraud — cannot ground inclusion on that list, being the exclusive preserve of the Bar Councils under the Advocates Act, 1961.
On 12 July 2024, a two-judge bench granted Arvind Kejriwal interim bail in the ED's Delhi excise-policy matter, held that an arrest under Section 19 PMLA must rest on cogent, fairly weighed material and is judicially reviewable, and referred framed questions on whether the 'need and necessity to arrest' is a distinct ground of challenge to a larger bench.
The Supreme Court held that Rule 23(1) of the Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019 — which suspends benefits while a family member faces a murder or abetment charge in the death of the Government employee — applies by its plain text and marginal heading only to 'compassionate financial assistance' and has no application to 'compassionate appointment', a structurally distinct relief under the same Rules. Rule 23(1) is constitutionally valid within its own domain, but the State erred in invoking it to defer an appointment claim. The Court upheld the provision under Article 14, flagged the resulting anomaly for legislative cure, and directed the appellant's claim be decided within three months, uninfluenced by Rule 23(1).
On 18 September 2020, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court upheld a decree of partial specific performance where a vendor had promised the same land twice over. A digest of Section 12 of the Specific Relief Act read purposively, the post-2018 shift from discretion to obligation, and why a subsequent purchaser with notice of an earlier contract cannot invoke Section 19(b).
On 26 April 2011, a two-judge bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly set out the principles on what constitutes 'taking of possession' of acquired land. There is no universal rule — the mode turns on the nature of the land. For vacant land, the authority going to the spot and drawing up a panchnama ordinarily suffices; where a crop is standing or a structure exists, notice to the occupier and possession before independent witnesses is ordinarily required. It remains the go-to statement of the possession-and-vesting principles.
The Supreme Court set aside concurrent findings in a 51-year-old Oraon land dispute, restating the four attributes of a valid custom and the narrow Article 136 grounds for disturbing findings of fact — and holding that under Oraon custom a ghardamad inherits only if adopted by the last male owner or his widow, not by an uncle-in-law.
On 2 January 2025, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that where the State takes possession of land but pays no compensation for the better part of two decades, the prolonged deprivation violates Article 300A — and that although a Special Land Acquisition Officer cannot on his own shift the statutory date for fixing market value, a constitutional court under Articles 32, 226 or 142 may, in exceptional cases of inordinate State delay, direct that market value be reckoned as of a later date. On the facts, the Court fixed the value as on 22 April 2019. A digest of the holding and its place in the Article 300A line.
On 6 January 2025, a two-judge bench delivered a comprehensive restatement of Section 52A NDPS, holding the provision procedural and non-compliance not per se fatal unless it casts reasonable doubt on the identity and integrity of the seized substance.
On 24 November 2020, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that the Union's continued occupation of requisitioned land for 33 years after its requisitioning authority had lapsed was 'condoning lawlessness'. Justice S. Ravindra Bhat's judgment read Article 300A as standing on the same footing as Articles 21 and 265 — a guarantee of the supremacy of the rule of law — and directed possession to be restored within three months. The case turns on the distinction between requisition and acquisition.
The Supreme Court held that the amalgamation of a tenant bank under Section 45 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 attracts Section 14(1)(b) of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 — the eviction ground draws no line between voluntary and involuntary transfers, and a scheme framed by the RBI is administrative, not legislative.
A five-judge Constitution Bench held that when the Court struck down Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act in Subramanian Swamy (2014), the provision was not merely invalid going forward — it was void ab initio, unenforceable from the date of its insertion on 11 September 2003. The Bench rejected the Article 20(1) ex-post-facto objection because Section 6A was a procedural protection, not a penal provision creating an offence.
On 5 December 2018, the Supreme Court settled the boundary between TRAI and the CCI in the Jio interconnection dispute. It held that where a grievance is rooted in the telecom licensing framework, TRAI — the specialised regulator — must first determine the jurisdictional facts before the CCI can act. A digest of the sequencing doctrine, the verbatim reasoning, and why the two regimes are complementary rather than exclusionary.
The foundational judgment on CCI procedure. A three-judge Bench held that a direction to the Director General to investigate under Section 26(1) of the Competition Act is an administrative, prima facie order — not a final adjudication and not appealable to the Tribunal. It also held that the Commission must still record minimal reasons, need not hear the party at that stage, and is a necessary party once an appeal is filed.
The Supreme Court held that the disclosure form's phrase 'assets of myself, my spouse and dependents' obliges a candidate to declare property held solely by the spouse — the comma after 'myself' is a listing comma, not one of exclusion. It also held that the Representation of the People Act, 1951 does not govern municipal elections, but that the Magistrate's mislabelled cognizance under s.125A is a curable defect under Section 465 CrPC. Remanded, with no opinion on the merits.
The Supreme Court's three-judge Bench held that employees' PF and ESI contributions deducted from wages but deposited after the welfare-statute due date cannot be claimed under Section 36(1)(va) of the Income Tax Act. Section 43B does not rescue a late employees'-contribution deposit, because that money is held in trust and deemed income, not the employer's own liability.
A branch falling from an old roadside tree onto a sheltering autorickshaw was an unforeseeable Act of God, and the injury did not arise from the vehicle's 'use' in the proximate sense Section 166 requires — yet the Supreme Court still enhanced compensation under Article 142.
On 7 March 2011, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court quashed the acquisition of fertile agricultural land for a district jail at Shahjahanpur, holding that the emergency power under Section 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 cannot be invoked to dispense with the landowner's right to object under Section 5A absent a real and demonstrable urgency. A digest of the holding, the reasoning on urgency and alternative sites, and where the decision sits in the urgency-clause line.
On 12 May 2023, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court set aside a Telangana High Court order granting bail in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 matter and remitted the bail applications for fresh consideration. The Court held that the investigation of the predicate (scheduled) offence and the Enforcement Directorate's investigation of the money-laundering offence are separate and distinct, and that the mere filing of a charge-sheet in the predicate offence is no ground to grant bail under the PMLA while the ED investigation is still ongoing — a rare Enforcement-Directorate-favourable, bail-cancellation ratio in the post-Vijay Madanlal line. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal frame, and where it sits against the pro-liberty cases.
The Supreme Court analytically split a public recruitment into three stages — advertisement, selection by interview, and the formal appointment decision — and held that the absence of statutorily mandated official members from the appointing Board's meeting under amended Rule 3 did not vitiate an otherwise fair and transparent recruitment; the defect was curable by reconvening a properly constituted Board, not fatal, especially where the appointees bore no responsibility and had served over a decade.
On 22 April 2020, a three-judge bench held that the weight of the entire mixture — narcotic plus neutral substances — decides whether an NDPS seizure is 'small' or 'commercial', overruling E. Micheal Raj.
On 27 August 2024 the Supreme Court granted bail to K. Kavitha in the Delhi excise-policy money-laundering case, holding that the first proviso to Section 45(1) PMLA — which relaxes the twin bail conditions for a woman — cannot be denied merely because the woman is highly educated, sophisticated, or a Member of Parliament or Legislative Assembly. The Court found the Delhi High Court had misread Saumya Chaurasia to confine the proviso to 'vulnerable women'. A digest of the pro-applicant pole of the s.45 proviso debate, the excise-policy context, and how it pairs against the restrictive discretionary reading.
In this 2019 decision the Supreme Court restated the material questions a court must answer before decreeing specific performance of a contract to sell immovable property. Decided under the pre-2018 Specific Relief Act, it is a compact guide to what a buyer must plead and prove — a valid concluded contract, continuous readiness and willingness, and an equitable case for the discretionary relief.
On 29 July 2009, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court resolved the Abdul Rashid–Sajan Abraham conflict, holding that total non-compliance with Section 42 NDPS vitiates the trial while delayed compliance with a satisfactory explanation is acceptable.
On 31 August 2016, a two-judge Bench of Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Arun Mishra quashed the acquisition of roughly 1,000 acres at Singur in Hooghly, West Bengal, for Tata Motors' Small Car (Nano) project. The two judges wrote separately and split on 'public purpose' — Gopala Gowda J held the acquisition was really for a company and had bypassed the mandatory Part VII procedure, while Arun Mishra J held that attracting industry and employment IS a valid public purpose — but concurred that the Section 5A enquiry was not genuinely conducted, and on that shared ground the acquisition was struck down. A digest of the two opinions, the shared ratio, and the relief.
On 21 January 2020 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that a Speaker acting as a Tribunal under the Tenth Schedule must decide a disqualification petition within a reasonable period — ordinarily about three months absent exceptional circumstances — and that courts may issue a mandamus directing the Speaker to decide within a fixed time. The Bench also recorded serious reservations about vesting a quasi-judicial defection power in a Speaker who belongs to a political party, and urged Parliament to consider a permanent independent tribunal. This editorial reads the reasonable-period rule, the mandamus architecture, and the reform recommendation.
On 16 May 2024, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that the constitutional right to property under Article 300A is 'a net of intersecting sub-rights' — and that before depriving a person of property the State must honour seven procedural sub-rights: notice, hearing, a reasoned decision, public purpose, restitution or fair compensation, an efficient and expeditious process, and conclusion. Because Section 352 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 prescribes no procedure for acquisition, it can never be a valid power of acquisition, and the purported deprivation was without authority of law. A digest of the holding, the seven sub-rights, and their significance for land-acquisition practice.
The Supreme Court affirmed the setting aside of a 1994 compromise decree in a partition suit, holding that Order XXIII Rule 3 CPC requires a written agreement signed by the parties, that an advocate's implied authority does not extend to signing away a client's substantive property rights without express authorisation or exigency, and that a roughly 25-year delay could be excused where a fraudulent compromise decree defeated substantive rights.
On 9 August 2011, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia — with the judgment authored by Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan — upheld the Roerich Estate Acquisition Act 1996 and Section 110 of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, and in doing so laid down the doctrinal foundation of Article 300A: a law depriving a person of property must be for a public purpose and must be just, fair and reasonable in conformity with the rule of law. Article 300A does not, in terms, mandate compensation, but the phrase 'authority of law' imports rule-of-law safeguards against arbitrary or confiscatory deprivation.
The Supreme Court accepted that the correct standard for producing additional documents under Order XI CPC in a commercial suit is 'reasonable cause', not 'sufficient cause' — yet dismissed the appeal, holding that even on that lower threshold there was no justification for a 2023 application to add emails, vendor agreements and server data that were always in the applicant's own possession. The Commercial Courts Act's timelines do not permit a piecemeal approach to evidence, however voluminous the record.
The Supreme Court restored a decree for title and possession, holding that Explanation IV to Section 11 CPC bars only those grounds a plaintiff 'might and ought to have' raised earlier, judged by reasonable diligence against the ambit and nature of the earlier controversy — and that suits to cancel specific sale deeds did not oblige the owner to also litigate his undisputed title to the residual estate.
Hearing a routine motor-accident appeal after a five-year-old was killed on a road with no footpath, the Supreme Court declared the right to walk — including a safe, demarcated footpath — a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(d) read with Articles 19(1)(a)–(c) and 21, with priority over motorised traffic. It renumbered the matter as an Article 32 petition, impleaded three Union Ministries, and referred a statutory framework to the Law Commission.
Under pre-2018 Section 16(c) of the Specific Relief Act, a buyer must plead and prove continuous readiness and willingness from the date of the agreement to the decree — so fixed deposits created years after the suit, plus an unexplained delay of two years and nine months in filing, defeated the claim for specific performance.
On 28 March 2023, a two-judge bench held that undue and unexplained delay in trial, read with Section 436A CrPC and the presumption of innocence, can justify bail under the NDPS Act despite the Section 37 twin conditions.
On 31 August 2020, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that the informant and the investigating officer being the same person does not, by itself, vitiate an NDPS trial, overruling Mohan Lal v State of Punjab.
On 13 July 2016 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court decided the Arunachal Pradesh political crisis in Nabam Rebia v. Deputy Speaker. It held that a Speaker facing a pending notice for his own removal under Article 179(c) cannot adjudicate Tenth Schedule disqualification petitions, and that the Governor cannot use Article 174 to summon or advance an Assembly session at his own discretion against the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. The Court quashed the Governor's actions and restored the status quo ante.
On 19 July 2022, a three-judge bench held that 'reasonable grounds' under Section 37(1)(b) NDPS mean credible and plausible grounds, and that custody length or a filed chargesheet do not by themselves relax the bar. The Court cancelled bail.
A five-judge Constitution Bench resolved a long-running split on whether the demand of illegal gratification under the Prevention of Corruption Act can be proved without the complainant's direct testimony. When the complainant dies or turns hostile, the Court held, demand and acceptance may be established by inference from other evidence adduced by the prosecution.
Setting aside a Punjab & Haryana High Court remand, the Supreme Court held that where an offence is triable exclusively by the Court of Session, a Magistrate seized of a complaint case is not required to record full pre-charge evidence under Section 244 CrPC. The committal role under Section 209 is a 'narrow inspection hole' — administrative, not evidentiary.
On 23 November 2017, a two-judge bench of Justices R.F. Nariman and Sanjay Kishan Kaul struck down the twin conditions for bail in Section 45(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, as unconstitutional — violative of Articles 14 and 21. The Court held that tethering the bail fetter to the punishment threshold of the Part-A scheduled offence, rather than to the money-laundering offence itself, was a classification with no rational nexus to the object of the Act. This is the doctrinal origin of the whole twin-conditions saga; a 2018 amendment recast the provision, and Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (2022) later upheld the revived form. A digest of the holding, the ratio on Articles 14 and 21, and why the strike-down remains the reference point everything since is measured against.
On 9 July 2008, a two-judge bench upheld the NDPS Act's reverse-burden provisions but read them down: the prosecution must first prove the foundational facts beyond reasonable doubt before any presumption shifts to the accused.
On 5 September 2019, the Supreme Court refused pre-arrest bail to P. Chidambaram in the INX Media Enforcement Directorate matter, holding that anticipatory bail must be exercised sparingly in economic offences, which stand as a class apart — the gravity of the offence, the need for custodial interrogation, and the stage of the investigation weigh against the discretion under Section 438. A digest of the anticipatory-bail holding, its distinction from the regular-bail grant that followed on 4 December 2019, and how the 'class apart' line has since been nuanced by the speedy-trial bail jurisprudence.
On 3 October 2023, the Supreme Court held that the Directorate of Enforcement must furnish the written grounds of arrest to a person arrested under Section 19 of the PMLA as a matter of course and without exception. Merely reading the grounds out, or letting the arrestee read and sign them, does not satisfy Article 22(1) or Section 19(1) — and an arrest made without written grounds, together with the remand that follows, is vitiated. The judgment also censured the ED's clandestine second ECIR, recorded to defeat the anticipatory-bail protection the appellants had just secured, and set aside the contrary High Court view in Moin Akhtar Qureshi. This is the PMLA origin of the written-grounds rule that Prabir Purkayastha later carried across to the UAPA and arrests generally.
The Supreme Court held that a person need not be an accused in the scheduled offence to be prosecuted under Section 3 of the PMLA, but that criminal conspiracy under Section 120-B of the IPC becomes a scheduled offence only where the conspiracy is to commit an offence that is itself in the PMLA Schedule.
The Supreme Court set aside NCLT and NCLAT orders admitting a Section 7 application because the tribunal had relied on six 'precedents' that AI had fabricated, and declared a zero-tolerance rule for the Bar and Bench citing unverified AI-generated material.
On 15 April 2011, a two-judge bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly held that the power under Sections 17(1) and 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to dispense with the Section 5A objection enquiry is an extraordinary power — available only where the public purpose cannot brook even a few weeks' delay. Acquisition for planned industrial and residential development near Greater Noida, which by its nature takes years, could not justify denying landowners their Section 5A hearing. Once urgency is challenged, the burden falls on the State to justify the dispensation.
Setting aside a Punjab & Haryana High Court judgment for the second time, the Supreme Court held that a court cannot substitute valuer-assessed compensation for a decree of mandatory injunction that was never sought, cannot direct an Executing Court to 'assess' a value once the underlying decree is gone, and cannot dispose of a second appeal without actually framing and answering substantial questions of law under Section 100 CPC.
The Supreme Court held that the substituted Section 59(d) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 — which made the Commissioner the disciplinary authority for all municipal officers from 01.10.1993 — did not relate back to the Act's original commencement, and that the phrase 'subject to any regulation that may be made in this behalf' points only to regulations framed after the amendment, not the pre-existing 1959 Regulations.
On 15 December 2023, a coordinate bench of the Supreme Court read Section 19 of the PMLA to require that the written grounds of arrest be furnished within 24 hours of arrest rather than at the instant of arrest, and held that Pankaj Bansal operates prospectively — so arrests made before 3 October 2023 are not vitiated for want of contemporaneous written grounds. The essential qualifier that narrows the Pankaj Bansal safeguard.
The Supreme Court dismissed a liquidator's Section 62 IBC appeal as time-barred, holding that the Code allows only 45 days plus a 15-day grace period to file, and that a defectively filed appeal must be cured within 28 days under the Supreme Court Rules — beyond which the right to appeal is extinguished and no delay can be condoned.
The Supreme Court settled a long-inconsistent question of motor accident law — which years' Income Tax Returns fix a deceased's annual income under Section 166 — by bifurcating the rule for salaried and self-employed claimants.
The Supreme Court held that a 1957 sale by a bhumidhar in alleged breach of Section 154 of the U.P. Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950 was not void ab initio but only voidable at the Gaon Sabha's instance under the then Section 163; the 1982 amendment making such transfers void with automatic State vesting does not operate retrospectively, and consolidation authorities cannot disregard a voidable registered sale deed that only a civil court may cancel.
The Supreme Court restored concurrent findings that a 1974 will was not validly executed: where an illiterate testator's will disinherits his widow — his only Class I heir — in favour of non-relatives, carries factually incorrect recitals, and bears uninitialed cuttings that change the presenter's name on the sub-registrar's endorsement, the propounder must dispel those suspicious circumstances, and a High Court exceeds Section 100 CPC by reversing such findings of fact.
On 14 December 2023 the Supreme Court refused PMLA bail to Saumya Chaurasia, holding that the words 'may be' in the first proviso to Section 45(1) make the relaxed-bail benefit for a woman discretionary — to be extended only after weighing the extent of her involvement and the nature of the evidence — and cautioning counsel against inaccurate representations in special leave petitions.
The Supreme Court enhanced a carpenter's motor-accident compensation to ₹35,95,923, holding that a skilled artisan's notional income cannot be pegged to minimum wages, that functional disability (100%) — not the 70% medical figure — governs loss of earning capacity, and that future prosthetic-limb costs must be quantified over the injured's lifetime.
In one of the first Supreme Court readings of default bail under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the Court held that non-filing of the additional copies of the police report required by Section 193(8) BNSS does not entitle an accused to default bail. Once a Section 193(3)-compliant chargesheet is filed within the 60/90-day period, the Section 187(3) right is extinguished.
In 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Kerala High Court could not impose a viva-voce cut-off after the selection process had run. The judgment grounds substantive legitimate expectation in Article 14 and sets out when such an expectation arises and when public interest may defeat it.
The Supreme Court held that the Madhya Pradesh Special Police Establishment of the Lokayukt Organisation — which investigates corruption under the Prevention of Corruption Act and IPC sections 409, 420 and Chapter XVIII — is not an 'intelligence and security' organisation within Section 24(4) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, and struck down the State notification exempting it. It also held that a court may test the vires of subordinate legislation suo motu once the issue squarely arises and the State is heard.
In 2011 the Supreme Court refused the State of Haryana's suit to be declared owner of a citizen's land by adverse possession, restored possession to the owner, and delivered a sweeping critique of the doctrine as irrational and disproportionate — reaffirming the right to property as a constitutional and human right.
The Supreme Court set aside a High Court bail order in an NDPS commercial-quantity case, holding the Section 37 twin conditions mandatory and 'reasonable grounds' to mean substantial probable cause, not merely a prima facie view.
On 21 July 1999, a Constitution Bench held that an empowered officer about to search a person under the NDPS Act must inform the suspect of the right to be searched before the nearest gazetted officer or magistrate, and that this safeguard is mandatory.
On 8 April 2025 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that a Governor has neither a pocket veto nor an absolute veto over bills passed by a State Legislature, read Article 200 through the aid-and-advice discipline of Article 163, and prescribed outer time-limits for the Governor's and the President's courses of action. Using Article 142, it deemed ten Tamil Nadu bills to have received assent. The correctness of that judgment — the timelines and the deemed-assent device especially — was then referred to a Constitution Bench under Article 143, whose advisory opinion of 20 November 2025 disapproved both. This piece reads the holding and the live doubt over its finality.
On 16 May 2024 the Supreme Court held that once the Special Court takes cognizance of a PMLA complaint under Section 44(1)(b), the ED is powerless to arrest under Section 19; an accused who appears on summons is not in custody, so the Section 45 twin conditions are not attracted, and the court may instead take a bond under Section 88 CrPC.
The Supreme Court set aside orders of the District Forum, State Commission and National Commission that had relegated a homebuyer's delayed-possession complaint to arbitration. Justice Vikram Nath held that Section 3 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 makes the consumer remedy additional to other remedies, and that once a complaint is admitted the proviso to Section 12(4) bars its transfer — reaffirming Emaar MGF v. Aftab Singh.
On 29 October 2020, a 2:1 Supreme Court bench held that NDPS officers are 'police officers' under section 25 of the Evidence Act, so a statement recorded under section 67 cannot be used as a confession to convict.
On 2 November 2012, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that even after the 44th Constitutional Amendment removed property from the list of fundamental rights, the right to property survives as both a human right in a welfare State and a constitutional right under Article 300A. The State had taken the appellants' land without acquisition or compensation; forcible dispossession without due process, the Court held, is unconstitutional — and the State cannot escape behind the very delay its own default produced.
On 13 February 2025 the Supreme Court set aside a Patna High Court order granting PMLA bail by a cryptic order, holding that the Section 45 twin conditions are mandatory, that a bail court must record its satisfaction on them in a reasoned order, and that Section 50 statements are not barred by Article 20(3) at the bail stage. A digest of the holding and where it sits in the PMLA bail line.
On 28 January 2016, the Supreme Court confronted warehouses of seized drugs rotting and being pilfered, and laid down the Section 52A NDPS regime — inventory, photographs, magistrate-certified representative sampling, and a scheme for early disposal.
On 19 September 2019, a two-judge bench held Section 3-J of the National Highways Act, 1956 unconstitutional to the extent it denied solatium and interest available under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 — restoring those benefits to landowners whose land was acquired for national highways between 1997 and 2015, and harmonising the highways regime with the 1894 Act and the 2013 Act.
On 7 August 2023, the Supreme Court held that 'custody' under Section 167(2) CrPC covers agencies beyond the police — including the ED — that the 15-day custody ceiling runs across the whole 60/90-day investigation, and that a writ of habeas corpus cannot short-circuit a magistrate's remand once Section 19 PMLA is complied with. A digest of the cash-for-jobs custody ruling, the hospitalisation episode, and the reference on Anupam Kulkarni.
On 8 January 2020, the Supreme Court held that the forcible dispossession of a citizen from her private property without following due process of law violates both the human right to property and the constitutional right under Article 300A. An illiterate widow's land had been taken for a road in 1967–68 with no acquisition and no compensation. A welfare State, the Court held, cannot plead the bar of limitation against a continuing wrong, nor perfect its title by adverse possession over its own citizen's land.
On 11 October 2022 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court answered two questions on the sanction to prosecute a public servant under Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988. It held that the three-month period for deciding a sanction request — extendable by one month where legal consultation is required — is mandatory, yet that a failure to sanction in time does not vitiate or quash the prosecution. The consequence of delay is the accountability of the defaulting officer, subject to judicial review and CVC action, not the acquittal of the accused.
In 2010 a Constitution Bench settled a running conflict, holding that Section 50 of the NDPS Act is mandatory and demands strict compliance — 'substantial compliance' will not do.
A seven-judge Constitution Bench, by 4:3, read the word 'his' in section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 broadly. An appeal for votes on the ground of religion, race, caste, community or language — of the candidate, his agent, the rival, or the voter — is a corrupt practice. The dissent would have confined 'his' to the candidate.
The Supreme Court rejected the plea for 100% EVM-VVPAT cross-verification and a return to ballot papers, upholding the electronic voting system. But it issued fresh safeguard directions: sealing Symbol Loading Units for 45 days and allowing post-result checks of EVM microcontrollers on a losing candidate's written request.
The Supreme Court held that a retrospective environmental clearance is alien to environmental jurisprudence and an anathema to the EIA Notification, 1994, striking down a 2002 circular that permitted post-facto clearances. Balancing equities, it declined to order closure but upheld a restitutionary penalty of Rs 10 crore on each erring unit.
The Supreme Court set aside SEBI's insider-trading orders against PC Jeweller's managing director and his relatives, holding that Regulation 3 of the PIT Regulations creates no deeming fiction: the communication of unpublished price-sensitive information must be proved by cogent material — letters, emails, witnesses — not inferred from family proximity or the timing of trades. Estranged, financially-independent relatives are not 'connected persons' or 'immediate relatives'.
A five-judge Constitution Bench struck down a Governor's notification reserving 100% of teacher posts in Scheduled Areas for Scheduled Tribes. The Court held the measure arbitrary, in breach of the 50% ceiling from Indra Sawhney, and beyond the Governor's Fifth Schedule power, which cannot override the fundamental rights in Part III.
The Supreme Court set aside an NCDRC order that found medical negligence in antenatal care, when the complaint had pleaded negligence only in post-delivery management. A consumer forum cannot construct a new case the complainant never pleaded, and relief must stay confined to the case as pleaded.
The NCDRC dismissed Fortis neurosurgeons' appeal and upheld a ₹50 lakh award, holding negligence proved on res ipsa loquitur where surgery proceeded without fresh pre-operative investigations and without informed consent, while exonerating the hospital.
The Supreme Court held that an allottee facing delayed possession is entitled to a refund with the agreed rate of interest, but cannot also recover the interest paid on a personal home loan. The contractual interest already compensates for every consequence of the delay, so stacking a separate loan-interest award amounts to impermissible double recovery.
The Supreme Court affirmed that a hospital is vicariously liable for the negligence of the doctors and staff it employs, upholding the NCDRC's finding of negligence in the death of a 27-year-old patient. It modified only the quantum, reducing the hospital's share of compensation from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
The Delhi High Court held that director disqualification under Section 164(2) of the Companies Act 2013 operates prospectively and arises automatically, without any prior hearing. But it found no statutory basis for the MCA to deactivate the disqualified directors' DINs and DSCs, and ordered them reactivated.
The Supreme Court held that the restaurant mark NANDHINI was not deceptively similar to the dairy federation's NANDINI, because the goods, trade channels and consumers differed. A proprietor cannot monopolise an entire class of goods, only the goods it actually deals in.
The Supreme Court set aside an NCDRC finding of negligence against an eye surgeon, holding that a worsening outcome after surgery does not prove negligence. The Court reaffirmed the Bolam test and placed the burden of proving negligence on the complainant, who had led no expert evidence.
The Supreme Court upheld 27% reservation for OBC candidates in the All India Quota seats for undergraduate and postgraduate NEET medical and dental admissions. Rejecting the petitioners' merit-versus-reservation framing, the Court held that reservation is not antithetical to merit but furthers distributive justice, and that an examination rank is not a proxy for merit.
The Securities Appellate Tribunal set aside SEBI's two-year debarment of the Price Waterhouse network in the Satyam matter, holding that an auditor who does not deal in securities cannot be barred under the PFUTP framework absent cogent proof of fraud or connivance — mere audit negligence falls to the ICAI, not SEBI. The Supreme Court has since stayed the broad jurisdictional observation.
The Supreme Court held that a voter's choice to reject every candidate is part of the freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a), directed the Election Commission to add a 'None of the Above' button on EVMs and ballots, and required that the negative vote be cast in secrecy. Rules 41(2)&(3) and 49-O of the Conduct of Election Rules, to the extent they breached that secrecy, were struck down.
The Delhi High Court held that a common-law derivative action survives in a deadlocked company under the wrongdoer-control exception to Foss v. Harbottle, and that a director who runs a competing business breaches the fiduciary duties codified in Section 166 of the Companies Act, 2013 and must account for the resulting gains.
The Bombay High Court held that a dispute falling within the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 is non-arbitrable, and that an arbitration clause in a builder-buyer arrangement cannot oust the jurisdiction of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority. Justice Madhav J. Jamdar applied the Booz Allen and Vidya Drolia non-arbitrability framework to a homebuyer's refund claim.
The Supreme Court held that when a defendant adopts a mark identical to a registered trade mark for identical goods or services, likelihood of confusion is presumed under Section 29(3) of the Trade Marks Act 1999. The plaintiff need not separately prove confusion, reputation, or damage, and the Section 30(1) honest-practices defence is unavailable unless both honesty and the absence of unfair advantage are shown.
The Supreme Court held that a candidate from a vertically reserved category (SC/ST/OBC) who scores above the general cut-off must be adjusted against the open seats on merit, not counted against the reserved quota. The rule holds even where the candidate also claims a horizontal reservation such as for women. The open category is open to all on merit.
The Supreme Court held that front-running by a person who is not a registered intermediary is prohibited under the SEBI (PFUTP) Regulations 2003. 'Fraud' in Regulations 3 and 4 is read broadly to cover any act that induces another to deal in securities, even without deceit, and Regulation 4(2)(q) is not confined to intermediaries.
The Supreme Court held that Section 430 of the Companies Act, 2013 is widely worded, so where a power — such as rectification of the register of members under Section 59 — is conferred on the NCLT, the jurisdiction of the civil court is completely barred. A shareholder disputing a share transfer must approach the NCLT, not a civil suit.
The Securities Appellate Tribunal set aside SEBI penalties against people who forwarded company financial figures on WhatsApp shortly before official announcements. Information becomes unpublished price sensitive information only when the person circulating it knew that it was both unpublished and price sensitive, and SEBI failed to prove that knowledge on a preponderance of probabilities.
Valkya Editorial··6 min
TribunalUttar Pradesh Real Estate Appellate Tribunal
The UP Real Estate Appellate Tribunal held that a temporary occupation certificate is not an occupancy certificate under RERA, so a developer cannot use it to force possession on a buyer of a long-delayed flat. The allottee was held entitled to refund of his deposit with interest at MCLR plus one percent.
The Bombay High Court at Goa held that s.14 of the POSH Act penalises a woman (or a person filing on her behalf) for a false and malicious complaint, but provides no punishment for a third party who instigates one. It also held that an Internal Committee cannot record a named instigator as an 'unknown' source where his identity is disclosed in the retraction letter that closed the complaint.
The Delhi High Court held that the absence of a recognised National Sports Federation for karate cannot deprive athletes of international opportunities, and directed the authorities to evolve an interim selection-and-entry mechanism until a recognised NSF is constituted.
On 8 June 2026 the Bombay High Court restrained Numen Pharma from using the mark 'ACIPROX', holding it phonetically similar to Alkem's registered 'ALCIPRO'. Justice Sharmila U. Deshmukh applied the heightened pharmaceutical confusion standard — the bare possibility of confusion is enough to injunct — and refused to dissect the rival marks syllable by syllable.
The Supreme Court held that the six-month waiting period for mutual-consent divorce under s.13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act is directory and may be waived where reconciliation is impossible, the statutory separation is over, and the parties have genuinely settled custody, maintenance and alimony. The waiting period exists to allow second thoughts, not to prolong an agreed parting.
The Supreme Court set aside the CCI's order keeping its 2019 approval of the Amazon–Future Coupons deal in abeyance and its ₹202-crore penalty. It held that Section 45(2) of the Competition Act — a penalty provision for false statements or omissions — cannot be read as a freestanding power to nullify, suspend, or re-open a concluded approval granted under Section 31(1).
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that a prosecution under Section 141 of the Negotiable Instruments Act cannot stand against a director or authorised signatory unless the company itself is arraigned as an accused. Vicarious liability is derivative, and the principal offender must be on the record before secondary liability can attach.
In an amputee's claim under the Motor Vehicles Act, the Supreme Court held that compensation for loss of earning capacity turns on functional disability — the real reduction in earning power in the claimant's vocation — not the percentage of physical disability certified by a medical board. It also reaffirmed that income-tax returns are cogent proof of pre-accident income and cannot be brushed aside on surmises.
The Madras High Court (CJ S.A. Dharmadhikari and G. Arul Murugan J.) dismissed a PIL seeking to restrict candidature in Scheduled-Caste-reserved constituencies to those professing Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism. The Court held that Returning Officers already possess summary powers to reject fraudulent nominations, and that any grievance over a false declaration must be raised through an election petition, not a writ that micro-manages an election in motion.
On 9 June 2026 the Supreme Court held that a member of the Central Armed Police Forces, including the BSF, may invoke the Delhi High Court's writ jurisdiction under Article 226(1) in a service matter on the strength of the situs of the Union of India and the force headquarters in Delhi, notwithstanding that the cause of action arose outside that High Court's territory. The doctrine of forum non conveniens, the Court held, will rarely apply where a constitutional remedy is pursued under clause (1) of Article 226.
The Supreme Court held that long-serving casual labourers granted temporary status under the 1991 Scheme are entitled to pension on superannuation even without a formal regularisation order. Pension, the Court reiterated, is a deferred wage, not employer grace. The Patna High Court was reversed and the CAT's orders restored.
The Supreme Court held that liability under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act attaches only to the drawer who maintains the account on which the cheque is drawn. A director who signs a cheque on his company's account does not become the drawer in his personal capacity, and cannot be prosecuted unless the company itself is arraigned.
The Competition Commission of India closed a decade-old case against twelve Delhi-NCR super-speciality hospitals over alleged overcharging on rooms, tests, devices, consumables and medicines. Disagreeing with its Director General, the Commission rejected a per-hospital market and found no abuse of a dominant position under Section 4.
The Supreme Court confirmed that a cheque-dishonour offence under s.138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act is compoundable under s.147, and framed graded-cost guidelines to push parties toward early settlement. A no-cost window at the first or second hearing rises to escalating percentages of the cheque amount the longer compounding is delayed, foregrounding the statute's compensatory purpose.
The Supreme Court quashed an FIR under Section 498A IPC, holding that vague, generalised allegations that mechanically rope in an entire family — without particularised acts of cruelty — cannot found a criminal prosecution and risk turning a protective provision into a tool of personal vendetta.
The Supreme Court held that an Internal Complaints Committee at the aggrieved woman's own workplace has jurisdiction under the POSH Act even where the respondent is employed in a different department or organisation. The phrase 'where the respondent is an employee' in Section 11 is a conditional trigger for service rules, not a jurisdictional limit.
The Supreme Court quashed a s.498A IPC and Dowry Prohibition Act prosecution against a husband's brother and unmarried sister, holding that relatives cannot be dragged into a matrimonial dispute on a casual reference to their names without specific allegations of active involvement. The decision deprecates the practice of roping in the entire household and treats it as an abuse of process.
On 6 February 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Manmohan and Rajesh Bindal upheld the finding of deficiency in service against the salon at ITC Maurya but set aside the NCDRC's ₹2 crore award, holding that a crore-rupee compensation claim cannot rest on presumptions, conjecture or unproved loss of earnings. The Court restricted the compensation to ₹25 lakh — the amount already released to the complainant. A digest of the holding and the principles for quantifying consumer compensation.
The Supreme Court held that for an account-payee cheque, territorial jurisdiction under s.142(2)(a) of the NI Act lies only with the court where the payee's home branch — the branch collecting the cheque — is situated. The contrary reading in Yogesh Upadhyay was declared per incuriam.
The Supreme Court quashed cheque-dishonour proceedings against an independent non-executive director, holding that mere designation as a director does not attract Section 141 liability. Vicarious liability under the NI Act must be pleaded and proved with specific averments that the director was in charge of and responsible for the company's business.
The Supreme Court held that there is no bar on a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal or appellate court awarding compensation greater than the sum claimed. The statutory duty under Section 168 of the Motor Vehicles Act is to award just compensation, subject only to the claimant paying court fee on the enhanced amount.
The Supreme Court restated the broad factors a court must weigh in fixing permanent alimony — status, the wife's reasonable needs, qualifications and employment, independent income, the marital standard of living, sacrifices for the family, litigation costs and the husband's capacity. Dissolving the marriage under Article 142, it fixed a one-time settlement of roughly ₹2 crore, holding that alimony must secure a decent life without being punitive.
The Supreme Court held that the addition for future prospects cannot be refused merely because the victim's income was notional rather than proved. Applying the Pranay Sethi percentages to a homemaker's notional income, the Court underscored the economic value of domestic work.
The Telangana High Court held that a man who pays for a sex worker's services cannot be prosecuted as a trafficker under section 370 IPC. He may be charged under section 370A(2) only if he knew, or had reason to believe, the woman was trafficked. Mere presence near a brothel is not enough.
Fifteen years after Vishaka, a long-running PIL forced compliance. The Supreme Court directed States to constitute Complaints Committees and amend their service and standing-order rules so that a Committee's report counts as a disciplinary inquiry finding — the enforcement bridge from Vishaka to the POSH Act, 2013.
In a cross-border custody dispute over two minor sons, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court's 'welfare alone' approach. The Court held that while the child's welfare is paramount, financial capacity, standard of living, comfort and education of the children — and the conduct of the parents — are all relevant. The matter was remanded for fresh consideration.
The Supreme Court, following Reliance General Insurance v. Shashi Sharma, held that compassionate financial assistance under the Haryana Rules of 2006 — which replicates the deceased employee's pay and wages — must be deducted from the loss-of-income component of a Motor Vehicles Act dependency award, because allowing both would be an impermissible double benefit. Genuinely collateral receipts such as life insurance and family pension remain non-deductible under Helen C. Rebello.
The National Green Tribunal disposed of a challenge to the Asharam Tiraha–Ratnagiri Tiraha (Ayodhya Bypass) six-laning in Bhopal, permitting felling of 7,871 trees — reduced from 9,888 after design changes — subject to compensatory afforestation at 10:1, native-species-only planting, 15-year monitoring by a technical committee, and air-quality monitoring. The order is a textbook application of the development-versus-environment balance.
Justice G.S. Patel laid down a detailed code to shield the identities of parties and witnesses in sexual-harassment litigation — anonymised cause-titles, orders delivered in chambers or in-camera, and a bar on media or social-media disclosure without leave. The judgment built the working confidentiality framework for POSH cases under s.16 of the 2013 Act.
The Supreme Court held that the power to award interim compensation under Section 143A(1) of the Negotiable Instruments Act is discretionary, because it operates before conviction against a presumptively innocent accused. A digest of why 'may' cannot be read as 'shall', the factors that now guide the discretion, and what the ruling changes for cheque-dishonour litigation.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the presumption under Section 139 of the Negotiable Instruments Act extends to the existence of a legally enforceable debt or liability, not merely the issuance of the cheque. Once the drawer admits the signature, an evidentiary onus shifts to the accused, rebuttable only on the preponderance of probabilities.
The Supreme Court issued continuing-mandamus directions to make the Compensation of Victims of Hit and Run Motor Accidents Scheme, 2022 actually reach claimants — police must inform victims, file the First Accident Report, and route unfiled cases to legal-aid authorities. The Court also told the Centre to consider raising the ₹2 lakh and ₹50,000 caps.
The Supreme Court used a fatal bus-accident claim to bring order to motor-accident compensation, fixing an age-based multiplier table and standard slabs for deducting the deceased's personal and living expenses. The framework became the bedrock of MACT computation, later affirmed by the Constitution Bench in Pranay Sethi.
On 12 June 2026, the Rajasthan High Court held that a former wife who continued Section 498A IPC proceedings against her ex-husband and his family after accepting ₹20 lakh as alimony and obtaining a decree of mutual divorce was abusing the process of law. The Court rejected the argument that the criminal case stood wholly independent of the settled matrimonial dispute.
A five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Supreme Court may, under Article 142, dissolve a marriage that has irretrievably broken down to do complete justice — even without one spouse's consent and bypassing the family-court reference — and that the six-month cooling-off period under section 13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act is waivable in a fit case.
The Bombay High Court held that a shared autorickshaw used to commute to office is not a 'workplace' under s.2(o)(v) of the POSH Act unless the transport is employer-provided. The Internal Committee that found the SBI employee guilty therefore acted without jurisdiction, and its order was set aside.
The Supreme Court quashed a criminal medical-negligence prosecution against an anaesthetist, holding that an expert panel without a peer specialist is a fundamental defect, and that a nurse's failure to find the epidural space is at most civil deficiency — not the gross negligence and mens rea that Section 304-A IPC demands.
The Supreme Court held that psychological or psychiatric evaluation of children in custody and visitation disputes is not barred, but is permissible only on demonstrable necessity, with minimum intrusion, institutional neutrality and proportionality, the child's welfare paramount. Courts must distinguish therapeutic care from adversarial evaluation and guard against parental-alienation dynamics.
The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a sexual-harassment complaint as time-barred under section 9 of the POSH Act. A complaint must be filed within three months of the last incident, extendable by three more for recorded reasons, and later administrative actions extend that window only if they share a direct nexus with the harassment.
The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission found a surgeon guilty of gross medical negligence for removing a patient's healthy left kidney instead of her diseased right one, awarding the family a total of approximately ₹2 crore.
The Kerala High Court held that a 'hostile work environment' divorced from any sexual conduct or advance is not sexual harassment under the POSH Act, and that proceedings need a written complaint under Section 9. A purely service or labour grievance falls outside the Act.
The Delhi High Court held that discharging a probationer while her sexual harassment complaint was pending — in defiance of a no-adverse-action direction — was retaliatory, mala fide and void. It ordered reinstatement with full back wages, and ruled that the Akademi's Secretary is the 'employer' under section 2(g) of the POSH Act, so the Local Committee had jurisdiction.
A three-judge bench held that a Section 138 complaint lodged before the 15-day statutory notice period has run is premature and discloses no cause of action, so no cognizance can be taken — even if the period has lapsed by the time the magistrate acts. The Court allowed a fresh complaint to be filed within a month of its judgment.
Valkya Editorial··6 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, Kolkata
CESTAT Kolkata held that the late fee for delayed filing of a bill of entry under Section 46(3) of the Customs Act, 1962 cannot be imposed mechanically — the proper officer has the discretion to waive it where the delay is not attributable to the importer. A digest of the facts, the holding, and what it means for importers facing routine late-fee demands.
The ITAT Delhi held that where the CBDT has accepted a royalty and technical-fee rate of 1.9% of net sales under the assessee's Unilateral Advance Pricing Agreement, the Transfer Pricing Officer's higher adjustment is excessive and must be capped at the APA-accepted rate. A digest of the facts, the arm's-length question, and why a concluded APA carries persuasive weight.
The Supreme Court held that where an arbitration agreement names two possible seats or venues but also confers exclusive jurisdiction on a specific court, the exclusive-jurisdiction clause governs and forum non conveniens does not apply to displace the chosen court. A digest of the facts, the holding, and what it means for drafting arbitration clauses.
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court refused to quash criminal proceedings against a sonologist for deficiencies in Form F records under the PCPNDT Act, holding that blank or incomplete columns are not trivial clerical mistakes but substantive statutory violations — a springboard for the offence of female foeticide. A digest of the facts, the holding, and the statutory scheme of Sections 4(3), 5, 6 and 23.
Valkya Editorial··7 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, Bangalore
A Bangalore Bench of CESTAT held that a building rented to an educational foundation for student accommodation falls within Section 66D(m) of the Finance Act 1994 — renting of a residential dwelling for use as residence — and is not service-taxable, because the exemption turns on residential use, not on the identity of the tenant.
A Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court held in June 2026 that property a grandfather self-acquired, and which fell to the father in a family partition, remains the father's separate and individual property — it does not take on the character of ancestral property in his hands, and a daughter therefore has no coparcenary right in it by birth. A digest of the holding and the settled line of Hindu-law authority it rests on.
The Supreme Court set aside a confirmed SARFAESI auction sale sixteen years on, holding that the balance-deposit timeline in Rule 9 of the Security Interest (Enforcement) Rules, 2002 is mandatory and goes to the root of the sale's validity. A digest of the facts, the holding, and what it means for auction purchasers and the heirs of a deceased guarantor.
A vacation bench of the Supreme Court dismissed Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan's Article 32 challenge to the rejection of her Rajya Sabha nomination. The Court held that Article 329(b) insulates an ongoing election from writ intervention — however glaring the alleged illegality, the only remedy lies in an election petition once the poll is over.
The Bombay High Court set aside a Section 17 order that had excused a party from producing the very contract said to breach a joint-venture non-compete, holding that a confidentiality clause inside an allegedly offending agreement cannot immunise that agreement from disclosure. A digest of the facts, the holding on confidentiality versus court-directed disclosure, the Section 17 set-aside and remand, and what it means for arbitration practice.
The Kerala High Court held that a claim to restructure companies and divide their assets under a private MOU falls within the NCLT's exclusive jurisdiction under Sections 241–242 of the Companies Act, 2013, and is non-arbitrable. A digest of the facts, the Vidya Drolia / Booz Allen arbitrability test, and the Court's use of Article 227.
On a Section 392 CrPC reference after a split verdict, a two-judge Supreme Court Bench doubted the long-standing rule in Sajjan Singh and referred to a larger Bench the question whether a referee judge can disturb concurrent findings of guilt the original Division Bench was unanimous on. A digest of the facts, the questions referred, and why the reference matters.
The Delhi High Court held that protection of possession under Section 53A of the Transfer of Property Act 1882 can be claimed only on a registered agreement to sell, and that persons who entered as tenants cannot convert themselves into owners on an unregistered agreement. A digest of the facts, the holding, and why registration is now decisive.
The Delhi High Court held that a plaintiff who accepts the amount conferred on it under an NCLT-approved resolution plan and then withdraws its connected recovery suit has 'settled' its claim within Section 16 of the Court Fees Act, 1870 — and is entitled to a full refund of court fee. A digest of the facts, the holding, and how the Court extended the M.C. Subramaniam line to the insolvency context.
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that an accused's wish to seek medical treatment abroad under Article 21 is not absolute and must yield to the complainant's right to a speedy trial where comparable facilities exist in India. A digest of the facts, the balancing test, and why the High Court's permission to travel was set aside.
The Supreme Court partly allowed an electricity-company clerk's appeal, holding that once a defective departmental inquiry is set aside and misconduct is later proved on fresh evidence, the disciplinary authority cannot mechanically fall back on the old, pre-remand show-cause notice and reimpose dismissal — it must independently apply its mind to the quantum of punishment. A digest of the facts, the holding on proportionality and natural justice, and what it means for service-law practice.
A Delhi High Court vacation bench dismissed Telegram's challenge to a temporary, nationwide block imposed ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination. Justice Tejas Karia held that Section 69A of the IT Act lets the Centre block an entire intermediary platform — not merely individual URLs or content — and that the emergency block cleared the proportionality test as the least restrictive measure available.
A Division Bench of the Madras High Court revived the 'Idhayam' trademark suits, holding that the unauthorised affixing of a registered mark in India on goods meant solely for export is a triable cause of action for infringement. A digest of the facts, the Order VII Rule 11 error, and the export-as-use question under the Trade Marks Act 1999.
Valkya Editorial··7 min
High CourtHigh Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh
A salary-execution petition before the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court turned on two precedents whose citations would not hold up to scrutiny — one untraceable, one patently wrong. Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal used the occasion to lay down that every AI-generated citation must be independently verified before it enters a judicial order, and directed the judgment circulated to all judicial officers in J&K and Ladakh.
A Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court allowed a person with locomotor disability to be appointed as Assistant Accounts Officer under the PwD quota, holding that suitability cannot be judged on a medical certificate alone but must include a functional assessment of the candidate's actual ability to do the job. A digest of the facts, the holding under the RPwD Act 2016, and what it means for public-employment selection.
A single judge of the Delhi High Court vacated an interim stay and refused to restrain the encashment of a USD 10.53 million unconditional performance bank guarantee, holding that a contractor's dispute over the legality of contract termination is no ground to injunct an autonomous guarantee. A digest of the facts, the Section 9 question, and the narrow fraud and special-equities exceptions restated in a cross-border India–Mozambique setting.
In June 2026 a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court quashed two 2012 Union Cabinet decisions and the consequent demand notices that sought a retrospective one-time spectrum charge on Airtel and Vodafone Idea. A digest of the facts, the holding that the Centre cannot unilaterally rewrite existing licence terms, and what it means for the sector.
In July 2025 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court revived Crocs' long-stalled enforcement campaign, holding that a common-law passing-off action is maintainable even where the product get-up is itself a registered design. A digest of the facts, the design/trade-dress overlap, and the doctrine's later trajectory through the Supreme Court.
In 1970 a three-judge Supreme Court bench, speaking through Chief Justice Hidayatullah, upheld the criminal-contempt conviction of a sitting Chief Minister for press-conference remarks attacking the judiciary. A digest of the facts, the line between fair criticism and scandalising the court, the place of Article 19(1)(a), and the reduced fine.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
High CourtHigh Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh
A single judge of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court took suo motu cognizance of criminal contempt against the law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas for allegedly misquoting an earlier judgment in a pre-litigation legal notice. A Division Bench closed the proceedings, holding that a bona fide — even erroneous — reading of a judgment is not contempt absent wilful distortion. A digest of the facts, the ratio, and what it means for advocates.
Taking suo motu cognizance of an elephant's death by electrocution, a Karnataka High Court Division Bench held that wildlife conservation is a constitutional mandate flowing from Articles 21, 48A and 51A(g). A digest of the suo motu jurisdiction, the constitutional reasoning, and the slate of preventive and accountability directions the Court issued.
A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court held that no construction — not even a public crematorium — may be raised on land classified CRZ-I(A), the most ecologically protected coastal category. A digest of the dense-mangrove facts, the rejection of retrospective 'rectification' of the CRZ category, and what the ecology-first standard means for coastal development.
In 1962 a six-judge Constitution Bench struck down nightly police visits to a suspect's home but refused to recognise a general right to privacy. A digest of the facts, the split between majority and dissent, and how Justice Subba Rao's lone dissent was vindicated half a century later.
Three years after Bachan Singh restricted the death penalty to the 'rarest of rare' cases, a three-judge Bench in Machhi Singh gave that open-textured standard a working structure — five categories of circumstance and a 'balance sheet' method for weighing aggravating against mitigating factors. A digest of the facts, the framework, and the doctrine's contested later trajectory.
In 1986 a two-judge Bench led by Bhagwati, CJI held that the discriminatory Travancore Christian Succession Act 1916 had already been repealed in 1951, so Syrian Christian daughters of former Travancore take an equal share with sons under the Indian Succession Act 1925. A digest of the facts, the statutory ratio, and the retrospectivity controversy that followed.
In 1983 a five-judge Constitution Bench struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code, which had made death the only punishment for a life-convict who committed murder. A digest of the facts, the holding that a mandatory, discretion-free death sentence violates Articles 14 and 21, and the judgment's place in India's death-penalty jurisprudence.
In September 2025 the Kerala High Court held that an insurer's arbitrary repudiation of a medical claim is not merely a contractual wrong but a violation of the right to life under Article 21 — and that writ jurisdiction under Article 226 lies against the insurer. A digest of the facts, the holding on writ maintainability and the nexus requirement, and what the case means for insureds.
In December 2025 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court dismissed the Revenue's transfer-pricing appeal, faulting the Dispute Resolution Panel for merely endorsing the Transfer Pricing Officer's conclusions without recording its own findings. A digest of the facts, the statutory duty of the DRP under Section 144C, and why the Court found no substantial question of law.
In 1998 a five-judge Constitution Bench split 3:2 on whether legislators who take bribes to vote a certain way can be prosecuted. The majority held that a member who took a bribe and then voted was immune under Article 105(2), while one who took the bribe but did not vote was not. A digest of the facts, the precise split, and how Sita Soren later overruled it.
In 1978 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed R.G. Anand's claim that the film 'New Delhi' had pirated his stage play 'Hum Hindustani', holding that there is no copyright in an idea, theme or plot. A digest of the facts, the seven propositions Justice Fazal Ali laid down, and the lay-observer test that still governs Indian infringement law.
A single judge of the Delhi High Court has declined to decide, and instead referred to a Larger Bench, a foundational sequencing question under the new BNSS: on a private complaint, must the accused be heard under the first proviso to Section 223(1) before or after the Magistrate examines the complainant on oath. A digest of the facts, the interpretive conflict over when 'cognizance' is taken, and the questions sent up for authoritative resolution.
In 1950 a six-judge Constitution Bench struck down a Madras ban on the weekly Cross Roads, holding that the freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a) includes the freedom of circulation, and that restrictions for ordinary public order fell outside the narrow Article 19(2) as it then stood. A digest of one of the Supreme Court's first free-speech rulings and the constitutional amendment it prompted.
The Kerala High Court held that a Section 54F deduction does not require the sale consideration itself to be invested in the new house — borrowed funds used to build it can qualify. The relief, however, is not automatic: the assessee must satisfy the authority of a genuine intention to repay the borrowings out of the capital gains. A digest of the facts, the writ relief on a Capital Gain SB Account, and what it means in practice.
In 1997 a three-judge Supreme Court bench held that the grant of mining leases over land in a Fifth Schedule Scheduled Area to non-tribals is barred by the protective law, and declared such leases void. A digest of the facts, the holding on government land and the Governor's powers, and the decision's place in tribal land jurisprudence.
A Division Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court struck down Rule 11(a) and Rule 11(b) of the State's 2025 PG-medical admission rules, which had reserved State-quota postgraduate seats for candidates who obtained their MBBS from a Chhattisgarh medical college. The Court held the institution-based preference to be a de-facto reservation, ultra vires and violative of Article 14. A digest of the facts, the holding, and the Supreme Court line it applied.
In April 2025 the Delhi High Court refused to injunct four social-media influencers who reviewed a protein supplement against the maker's defamation and trademark claims. Justice Amit Bansal held that evidence-based product criticism grounded in accredited lab reports is prima facie fair comment and protected free speech, not disparagement.
In 1995 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that a Hindu husband who converts to Islam cannot validly contract a second marriage while his first Hindu marriage subsists — the second marriage is void and the convert is guilty of bigamy under Section 494 IPC. A digest of the facts, the ratio on conversion and bigamy, and the obiter call for a Uniform Civil Code.
In 1995 a three-judge Supreme Court bench held that the airwaves are public property, that the freedom to telecast and to receive information is part of Article 19(1)(a), and that the State could not claim an absolute broadcasting monopoly. A digest of the Hero Cup dispute, the holding on spectrum and free speech, and the case's role in the birth of an independent public broadcaster.
In January 2025 the Karnataka High Court rejected an application to return a vessel-recovery petition to the Commercial Court, holding that maritime claims under the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act 2017 belong to the High Court's admiralty side. A digest of the facts, the forum question, and the lex specialis reasoning.
In December 1981 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court delivered the First Judges Case. Justice Bhagwati's opinion opened the courthouse door to public-spirited litigants and gave India its doctrine of Public Interest Litigation, while the majority held that 'consultation' of the Chief Justice in judicial appointments did not mean concurrence. A digest of the facts, the two holdings, and their divergent later fortunes.
Two connected Supreme Court decisions remade prisoners' rights in India. Batra I (1978) read down solitary confinement and bar fetters under the Prisons Act 1894; Batra II (1979/1980) treated a prisoner's letter as a habeas corpus petition and laid down protective directives against custodial torture. A digest of both, and the principle that Article 21 does not stop at the prison gate.
In December 1996 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court set aside a High Court injunction and upheld a public corporation's right to invoke its bank guarantees. A digest of the facts, the autonomy of the unconditional guarantee, the two narrow exceptions of fraud and irretrievable injustice, and the doctrine's later trajectory.
The Calcutta High Court set aside an arbitral award rendered by a sole arbitrator whom the financier had appointed unilaterally. A digest of the Section 12(5) bar, why participation is not waiver, and how the Court applied the TRF–Perkins Eastman line to declare the award a nullity opposed to public policy.
A five-judge Constitution Bench, splitting 3:2, held that the Board of Control for Cricket in India is not 'State' under Article 12 — so no writ under Article 32 lay against it. A digest of the facts, the instrumentality test, and the Article 12 / Article 226 divide the case crystallised.
In 2014 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu and bullock-cart races as cruelty under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, read the Five Freedoms into the statute, and gave the welfare of animals a constitutional vocabulary. A digest of the holding, the Five Freedoms standard, and how a 2023 Constitution Bench later distinguished the decision.
On 26 May 2025 the Delhi High Court restrained unidentified John Doe defendants from circulating AI-generated deepfake videos that impersonated personal-finance influencer Ankur Warikoo to defraud investors. A digest of the facts, the interim John Doe injunction, and what it signals for personality rights in the age of deepfake scams.
In 2016 a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court accepted the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee's recommendations and directed the BCCI to implement sweeping structural reforms. A digest of the two-judgment litigation born of the 2013 IPL betting scandal, the holding that the Board performs public functions amenable to Article 226, and how several reforms were later relaxed.
A Delhi High Court Division Bench dismissed the CCI's appeal and held that interest on a competition penalty can run only from default on a validly served demand notice. The judgment ties interest under the 2011 recovery regulations strictly to the Regulation 3 procedure and forecloses retrospective or automatic accrual. A digest of the dry cell batteries cartel facts, the question of when interest begins, and what the ruling means for penalty recovery.
A two-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that EBC's copy-edited versions of judgments could attract copyright only where they bore the imprint of skill and judgment and a minimal degree of creativity. A digest of the originality threshold under section 13 of the Copyright Act 1957, the rejection of pure sweat-of-the-brow, and the line drawn between protectable and unprotectable editorial inputs.
In 2017 a two-judge Supreme Court Bench upheld the 'relevant turnover' approach to competition penalties, holding that 'turnover' in section 27 of the Competition Act means turnover from the goods affected by the contravention, not a firm's total turnover. A digest of the bid-rigging facts, the proportionality reasoning, the DG's investigative scope, and how the 2023 Amendment has since changed the penalty base.
In July 2025 a Bombay High Court Division Bench dismissed a public interest litigation alleging that Prada's Milan runway sandals copied the Kolhapuri Chappal geographical indication. The Court held that the right to sue for GI infringement belongs to registered proprietors and authorised users, not to advocates filing a PIL under Article 226. A digest of the facts, the locus and forum holding, and what it settles about GI enforcement.
A five-judge Constitution Bench overruled the rule in Asian Resurfacing that interim stays lapse automatically after six months. A digest of the holding, the Article 142 limits the Court drew, and what it now means for litigants relying on a High Court stay.
A naval officer shot his wife's lover and asked the Supreme Court to call it culpable homicide, not murder. In 1961 the Court refused — the gap between the provocation and the killing was time enough for passion to cool. A digest of the cooling-off test under Exception 1 to s.300 IPC and the trial that helped end the jury in India.
In February 2026 a single judge of the Madras High Court, hearing a criminal revision arising from the financing of the Rajinikanth film Kochadaiyaan, affirmed a Section 138 conviction yet moulded the relief into a monetary direction rather than imprisonment. A digest of the facts, the compensatory characterisation of cheque-bounce law, and what it means for sentencing under the Negotiable Instruments Act.
In 1992 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that India's High Courts possess inherent, unlimited admiralty jurisdiction — not a power confined to obsolete colonial English statutes. A digest of the arrest of m.v. Elisabeth at Visakhapatnam, the source of that jurisdiction, and the road to the Admiralty Act, 2017.
A former Chief Minister of Odisha refused to answer written police interrogatories in a disproportionate-assets case, and was prosecuted under s.179 IPC. A three-judge Supreme Court bench held that Article 20(3) operates from the stage of police interrogation, that 'compulsion' includes psychological and environmental pressure, and that an accused may have a lawyer present during examination. A digest of the facts, the holding, and the case's lineage into Selvi.
In December 2013 a two-judge Supreme Court Bench set aside the Delhi High Court's Naz Foundation judgment and restored Section 377 IPC in full, re-criminalising consensual same-sex conduct between adults. A digest of the appeal, the Court's reasoning on Articles 14, 15 and 21, and how Koushal was first criticised in Puttaswamy and finally overruled in Navtej.
The Supreme Court held in 2026 that the IBC cannot recover a money decree from a solvent company; using it that way is an abuse of process — costs of ₹5 lakh.
The Supreme Court's Section 43 test for avoidable preferences, and its holding that a corporate debtor's third-party security for a holding company's debt does not make a lender a financial creditor.
The Supreme Court strikes down a Bihar statute that vested a 1924 heritage library in the State at one-rupee compensation as manifestly arbitrary under Art. 14.
In 1999, the Supreme Court adopted the precautionary principle, shifted the burden of proof onto the developer under scientific uncertainty, and made the case for specialised environmental courts.
The NCDRC set aside Oriental Insurance's repudiation of a film distributor's loss-of-revenue claim as arbitrary, a deficiency in service, awarding ₹3.80 crore.
The Kerala High Court holds that passport authorities cannot demand a court divorce decree to delete a former spouse's name after a valid Muslim extra-judicial divorce such as khula or talaq.
A Division Bench held that Amenity TDR under Section 126(1)(b) of the MRTP Act crystallises on surrender of reserved land and cannot be waived by contract.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held in 2001 that deceptive similarity for pharmaceutical products demands a stricter standard, laying down a multi-factor test in the Falcigo–Falcitab case.
In 1986 the Supreme Court struck down a State company's reasonless-termination clause as void under Section 23 of the Contract Act and arbitrary under Art. 14.
The Supreme Court's Constitution Bench in Dilip Kumar (2018) held that ambiguity in a tax exemption notification is construed in favour of the Revenue, overruling Sun Export Corporation.
The Delhi High Court upholds an arbitral award making DMRC reimburse a contractor's Environmental Compensation Charges, holding ECC is not a tax, duty or levy.
In 1974 a five-judge Constitution Bench dismissed E.P. Royappa's challenge to his transfer, yet Justice Bhagwati's opinion reshaped Indian equality law by holding that equality and arbitrariness are sworn enemies. A digest of the facts, the new arbitrariness test under Articles 14 and 16, and the doctrine's later trajectory.
Embassy Property v. State of Karnataka holds that the NCLT cannot adjudicate public-law disputes under the MMDR Act, and a writ to the High Court lies against a coram non judice order.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal
CESTAT Chennai held the extended period under Section 73(1) Finance Act 1994 cannot be invoked where alleged suppression is interpretational, allowing Faiveley.
The Supreme Court's settled statement of the IBC clean-slate rule: on approval of a resolution plan under Section 31, the plan binds every stakeholder, and claims outside it are extinguished.
In 1999 the Supreme Court read down 'after' in Section 6(a) of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956, holding the mother a natural guardian whenever the father is absent or indifferent.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal
CESTAT Hyderabad held HAL's SU-30 MKI technology transfer from Russia's Rosoboronexport is not Scientific or Technical Consultancy Service under service tax.
An eleven-judge Constitution Bench held 6:5 that Parliament cannot abridge Part III Fundamental Rights via Article 368, and introduced prospective overruling.
On 14 March 1960, an eight-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court delivered an advisory opinion on a Presidential Reference arising from the Indo-Pakistan boundary settlement. It held that the Preamble is not a part of the Constitution capable of overriding its express provisions, and that the cession of Indian territory to a foreign State cannot be achieved by ordinary law or by a law under Article 3 — it requires a constitutional amendment under Article 368. A digest of the reference, the questions, the holding, and where the case stands after Kesavananda.
Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta framed environmental protection as a continuing constitutional duty and ordered three States to curb Chambal sand mining.
A 3-Judge Bench routes India's stray-dog policy strictly through the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 and the AWBI SOP — district ABC centres, sensitive-premises removal, ward feeding zones and good-faith immunity for officials.
The Supreme Court's 4:1 Constitution Bench in Sabarimala held the exclusion of menstruating-age women from the temple unconstitutional and struck Rule 3(b).
The Supreme Court's 1994 ruling that the power to arrest and the justification for using it are two different things — and that an arrested person is entitled to have a relative or friend told. A close digest of the safeguards that prefigured D.K. Basu.
When the U.P. Government terminated every District Government Counsel by a single circular, the Supreme Court struck it down, holding that Article 14 disciplines State action in the contractual field.
A 2013 Constitution Bench held FIR registration mandatory under Section 154 CrPC when information discloses a cognizable offence, limiting preliminary inquiry.
The Supreme Court holds that a suit grounded in a prohibited benami arrangement cannot be saved by artful pleading, and that the 2016 Benami amendments are declaratory and retrospective.
Constitution Bench, 1953: customs confiscation under the Sea Customs Act is administrative, not a court prosecution, so Article 20(2) bars no later trial.
An English summary decree refusing leave to defend despite triable issues is not 'on the merits' under s.13(b) CPC, the Supreme Court held, and unenforceable.
The 1903 Privy Council ruling that a minor is incompetent to contract under Section 11, making the agreement void ab initio and barring recovery of the loan.
U.P. promised new sugar units a three-year sales-tax exemption; Motilal Padampat raised loans and built a plant, then the State resiled. The 1979 ruling on promissory estoppel against the Government.
The Supreme Court (April 2026) held that a reliable, consented DNA report on record overrides the conclusive presumption of legitimacy under s.112 / s.116.
The 1993 ruling that made compensation for custodial death under Articles 32 and 226 a public-law remedy, distinct from tort and immune to sovereign immunity.
In 1996 the Supreme Court recognised transborder reputation: Whirlpool, its Indian registration lapsed, could restrain a later registered proprietor through spillover goodwill in passing-off.
Bombay HC declares 'Shaadi.com' a well-known mark under Section 2(1)(zg); its reputation transcends matchmaking, so 'getshaadi.com' infringes the mark.
The Supreme Court held the State owes an Article 21 duty to redress serious vaccine injuries, directing the Centre to frame a no-fault COVID-19 policy.
On 4 May 1979, a three-judge Bench led by Justice P.N. Bhagwati laid down the multi-factor 'instrumentality or agency' test for when a body is 'State' under Article 12, and held that the State and its instrumentalities cannot depart arbitrarily from their own self-imposed standards when awarding contracts and largesse.
The Supreme Court held the Air Force Group Insurance Society is 'State' under Article 12, bringing it within writ jurisdiction, reversing the Delhi HC.
The 1983 decision in which the Supreme Court first awarded monetary compensation under Article 32 for breach of Article 21 — the birth of constitutional-tort jurisprudence in India.
Valkya Editorial··7 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal
CESTAT Kolkata holds customs cannot enhance a declared transaction value without first recording written reasons to doubt it under Rule 12 of the 2007 Rules.
In 1965 the Supreme Court held that a confession overheard as a soliloquy is admissible: communication to another is not essential to a confession at law.
The Supreme Court holds that mere possession of unpublished price-sensitive information is not insider trading: profit motive is essential, and a loss-making distress sale to save a firm is no wrong.
The Supreme Court creates a distinct 'Loss of Domestic Care' head of motor-accident compensation and values a homemaker's monthly contribution at ₹30,000.
ITAT Agra quashed a section 147/148 reassessment built solely on unverified Insight-portal data, holding jurisdiction void once its core ground failed.
On 3 December 2020, the Supreme Court upheld GST on lottery, betting and gambling, held an actionable claim is 'goods' under Section 2(52) of the CGST Act, and refused to exclude prize money.
How the Supreme Court struck down caste-wise college quotas under Article 29(2), held Directive Principles subordinate to Fundamental Rights, and triggered the First Amendment.
In 1952 a seven-judge Bench struck down the West Bengal Special Courts Act's power to refer individual cases to a special court, founding the reasonable-classification test under Article 14 and seeding the doctrine of arbitrariness.
The NCLAT upheld a Section 7 admission against Vatika Ltd. but modified the order, confining the CIRP to a single project rather than the whole developer.
The Supreme Court holds that Section 43-D(5) UAPA bows to Article 21, that prolonged pre-trial detention with trial delay defeats the statutory bar, and that a co-equal Bench cannot depart from Najeeb.
In 1957 a three-judge bench held evidence is weighed, not counted: a conviction can rest on a single wholly reliable witness, classifying witnesses into three.
Waman Rao v. Union of India (1981) made 24 April 1973 — the date of Kesavananda — the Ninth Schedule dividing line and upheld the un-amended Article 31-C.
In 1999 a single judge of the Delhi High Court held that a domain name functions as a trademark, protectable against passing off, and restrained yahooindia.com — India's first cybersquatting case.
On 29 April 1969, a five-judge bench held that the rule against bias vitiated a forest-service selection and collapsed the rigid distinction between administrative and quasi-judicial action — the foundation of modern Indian natural-justice doctrine.
On 5 November 2024, a three-judge bench upheld the constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act 2004, while striking down its higher-education-degree provisions as beyond State legislative competence under Entry 66 and the UGC Act.
The foundational Indian application of the Salomon principle — a shareholder owns shares, not the company's property, and the agricultural character of a tea company's income does not pass through to dividends in the shareholder's hands.
A three-judge bench laid down a strict, impropriety-based six-fold test for piercing the corporate veil, holding that canteen workers engaged through a wholly-owned subsidiary were not workmen of the parent company.
On 1 November 1995, a three-judge Bench restated the limited scope of judicial review of departmental discipline — review of the manner of decision, not an appeal on merits — and confined interference with the quantum of punishment to penalties that shock the conscience of the court.
In February 2024, a two-judge bench held that cellular service providers need not deduct TDS under Section 194-H on the margin retained by distributors, settling a five-High-Court split on the agent-versus-distributor distinction.
On 8 January 2024, a two-judge bench quashed the premature release of eleven convicts, holding that Gujarat was not the appropriate Government to grant remission under Section 432(7) CrPC and that the order directing it to act had been obtained by suppression of material facts.
On 31 March 2005, a two-judge bench restated the contours of natural justice — its flexibility, the primacy of audi alteram partem, the governing role of prejudice, and the capacity of a post-decisional hearing to cure a deficient pre-decisional one.
On 11 May 2016, a two-judge bench struck down TRAI's call-drop compensation regulation as ultra vires and manifestly arbitrary under Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) — engaging both Wednesbury manifest-arbitrariness and the doctrine of proportionality to review a regulator's subordinate legislation.
The Supreme Court imported the 'proper purpose' rule into Indian company law, holding that an allotment engineered to reduce a majority shareholder to a minority is an invalid exercise of fiduciary power and an act of oppression.
In May 2024, a three-judge bench applied Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal to hold that deemed lapse under Section 24(2) requires both non-payment and non-possession, upheld the Delhi acquisitions, and held that a subsequent change in the law is no ground for condonation of delay.
On 2 May 1990, a five-judge Constitution Bench distilled the law of seniority into eleven propositions — holding that seniority counts from the date of appointment according to rule, not confirmation, and that continuous officiation till regularisation counts towards seniority.
On 10 April 2024, a three-judge bench allowed DMRC's curative petition and set aside an arbitral award that, with interest, had swelled to about ₹8,000 crore, holding that the Court's earlier interference had restored a patently illegal award and caused a miscarriage of justice.
On 13 July 2024, the Kerala High Court held that "husband" in Section 498A IPC means a married man — a woman's live-in partner, absent a legally recognised marriage, cannot be prosecuted for matrimonial cruelty, and the proceedings against him were quashed.
On 8 January 2025, the Telangana High Court reaffirmed in the BNS era that a parent who is a natural guardian taking the child from the other parent is not kidnapping under Section 137(2) BNS, and that custody disputes belong before the family court.
On 17 December 1982, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that pension is a right earned by past service — a deferred wage, not a bounty — and struck down a retirement cut-off date that split a homogeneous class of pensioners as arbitrary under Article 14.
On 4 September 1990, a Constitution Bench of five judges struck down a 'hire and fire' clause permitting termination of permanent employees without reasons and without hearing — holding that audi alteram partem must be read into State termination powers and that arbitrary, unguided dismissal violates Article 14.
In 2013 the Supreme Court consolidated the scattered principles governing condonation of delay under Section 5 of the Limitation Act into a single authoritative set of propositions — the standard checklist on what counts as sufficient cause.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
High CourtHigh Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh
The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh quashed the ED's charge sheets in the cricket-association probe, holding that without a predicate scheduled offence there can be no proceeds of crime — and that conspiracy alone is not a scheduled offence.
Decided in 1992 and reported (1993) 1 SCC 71, a three-judge bench located the doctrine of legitimate expectation within Article 14 non-arbitrariness — holding that such an expectation is not itself an enforceable right, but a failure to give it due weight can render a decision arbitrary.
The Patna High Court held that where the ED files its prosecution complaint without arresting the accused during investigation, the power to arrest under Section 19 PMLA does not survive cognizance — applying Tarsem Lal.
On 3 January 2025, a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court held that the assignment of GIDC leasehold rights is akin to a sale of land excluded by Schedule III of the CGST Act, and not a taxable supply of service.
The Jharkhand High Court granted regular bail in a money-laundering case, finding the Section 45 PMLA twin conditions satisfied — there was reason to believe the petitioner was not guilty and unlikely to reoffend on bail.
On 13 November 1995, a three-judge bench held that medical services rendered for consideration fall within 'service' under the Consumer Protection Act 1986, opening the consumer fora to patients alleging deficiency in treatment.
In 2013 the Supreme Court mapped the multi-factor test for a 'relationship in the nature of marriage' under Section 2(f) of the Domestic Violence Act, holding that knowledge of a partner's subsisting marriage ordinarily defeats the claim.
Decided in August 2005, a three-judge bench adopted the Bolam standard for medical negligence in India, held that criminal liability under section 304A IPC demands gross negligence, and laid down procedural safeguards against the indiscriminate prosecution of doctors.
On 13 August 2024, a two-judge bench granted bail to a UAPA accused, holding that 'bail is the rule, jail is the exception' holds good even under stringent special statutes, and that the PFI is not a First-Schedule terrorist organisation.
On 3 July 2024, a two-judge bench held that where the State cannot ensure a speedy trial, it cannot oppose bail by pleading the seriousness of the offence, and that the Watali standard is no bar to bail where prolonged incarceration meets an interminable trial.
The Gauhati High Court held that NRC extracts are not admissible to prove Indian citizenship — census-derived records cannot be received as evidence under Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948 — and upheld a Foreigners' Tribunal declaration.
A two-judge bench in May 2025 quashed JSW Steel's resolution plan for Bhushan Power & Steel and ordered liquidation; on 26 September 2025 a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Gavai recalled that judgment and upheld the executed plan, re-framing the finality of implemented resolution plans.
In 2000 the Supreme Court restored a husband's dowry-death conviction while confirming the acquittal of his relatives, warning against the tendency to rope in all the in-laws and insisting on a 'proximate and live link' against each accused.
A 2022 bench held the 2018 Specific Relief Act amendment prospective and disturbed a specific-performance decree; in 2024 the Supreme Court allowed review, restored the High Court's decree on the merits and applied lis pendens, leaving the prospectivity question arguably open.
Decided on 4 April 1995, this judgment defined the 'commercial purpose' exclusion from the meaning of 'consumer' and held that the 1993 self-employment Explanation brings back the person who buys goods to earn a livelihood.
A five-judge Constitution Bench delivered a foundational statement on separate corporate personality, the narrow grounds for lifting the corporate veil, and the shareholder's right to requisition a meeting irrespective of motive.
Decided on 5 November 1993, this judgment held statutory development authorities answerable as 'service' providers under the Consumer Protection Act, with no sovereign-function immunity, and authorised compensation for harassment recovered from the salaries of erring officers.
In 1945 the Privy Council acquitted Mahbub Shah of murder, holding that Section 34 IPC demands a pre-arranged plan — a shared intention, not a merely similar one — to fasten constructive liability.
The 2003 Supreme Court decision settling the value of a test identification parade — the substantive evidence is identification in court; a TIP belongs to the investigation stage, is a rule of prudence, and is not itself substantive evidence.
On 9 August 2024, a two-judge bench granted bail to Manish Sisodia in both the ED and CBI Excise Policy cases, holding that 17 months' incarceration with no trial in sight violated the Article 21 right to a speedy trial.
On 22 July 2025, the Rajasthan High Court at Jaipur held that Section 2(2) of the Hindu Succession Act is a formidable barrier denying Scheduled Tribe daughters intestate succession, restored the claimant's right, and urged Parliament to amend the provision.
On 1 October 1993, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that a delinquent employee is entitled to a copy of the inquiry officer's report before the disciplinary authority decides — but tempered the remedy with a prejudice test, making non-supply void only where the employee shows prejudice.
The Supreme Court laid down the canonical checklist for sanctioning a scheme of arrangement — the court's role is supervisory, not appellate, and it does not sit in appeal over the commercial wisdom of the statutory majority.
On 24 June 2025, a Division Bench of the Telangana High Court held that a Muslim wife's right to dissolve her marriage by khula needs no husband's consent, and that Sharia councils and Muftis have no power to grant or refuse a divorce.
On 4 December 2025, the Gujarat High Court quashed a series of overlapping prohibitory orders, holding that emergency power cannot become normal governance and that such orders must be widely publicised, not merely gazetted.
A three-judge bench refused a finding of oppression over a FERA-driven rights issue, but moulded an equitable money remedy — the foundational Indian statement of what 'oppression' means under company law.
On 24 February 2026, the Allahabad High Court held that the UP anti-conversion law of 2021 is not attracted to an interfaith relationship or marriage where no conversion has occurred — the right to live with a partner of one's choice is intrinsic to Article 21.
Vivian Bose J.'s 1955 judgment refined Section 34 IPC, holding that common intention may form on the spur of the moment but must be distinguished from a merely similar intention — a distinction 'fine but nonetheless a real one'.
The Allahabad High Court held that a Magistrate cannot add to or exclude penal sections from the police report at the stage of taking cognisance — alteration is a charge-framing function, and the accused's remedy is discharge, not Section 482 quashing.
On 14 August 2025, a two-judge bench refused Pernod Ricard an injunction against 'London Pride', holding that 'Pride' is publici juris in the liquor trade, that composite marks must be assessed as a whole under the anti-dissection rule, and that premium-whisky buyers are discerning consumers.
In 1947 the Privy Council, through Sir John Beaumont, settled the meaning of 'fact discovered' under Section 27 of the Evidence Act — the bedrock test for every disclosure-and-recovery dispute that follows.
On 24 December 2025, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held that availing a RERA remedy does not, by the doctrine of election, bar a buyer from seeking interim protection under Section 9 of the Arbitration Act — the remedies are contemporaneous where the reliefs do not overlap.
In 2017 a two-judge bench installed Family Welfare Committees to screen Section 498-A complaints; in 2018 a three-judge bench withdrew that extra-statutory machinery, restoring the Arnesh Kumar arrest discipline.
In 2020 the Supreme Court issued binding pan-India guidelines on maintenance across overlapping statutory regimes, prescribed a mandatory Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities, and ruled that maintenance is payable from the date of the application.
The Uttarakhand High Court suspended a POCSO conviction and granted bail, terming the trial-court verdict 'more than shocking' — this was not a case of insufficient evidence but of no evidence at all, with the victim hostile and forensics unconnected to the accused.
A three-judge bench held in 2019 that a person who has perfected title by adverse possession can use it to found a suit, not merely as a defence, resolving conflicting two-judge authority under Article 65 of the Limitation Act.
On 19 December 2008, the Supreme Court held that a departmental enquiry finding cannot rest on the inquiry officer's ipse dixit, surmise or conjecture — that suspicion is never a substitute for legal proof, and that disciplinary orders carrying civil consequences must be supported by recorded reasons.
The Supreme Court's fullest modern restatement of the law of oppression — reaffirming that relief requires a continuous, deliberate course of unfair conduct, not isolated acts, in a dispute over the Baroda royal family's companies.
The 2021 Supreme Court restatement of dowry-death law, per Ramana CJI, explains the true import of 'soon before death' under Section 304B, the mandatory Section 113B presumption, and trial-court guidelines that reshaped how dowry-death cases are conducted.
A three-judge bench overruled S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra in 2020, holding that a 'shared household' under the Domestic Violence Act is not confined to property in which the husband holds title and can include a home owned by the in-laws.
In 1953 a three-judge bench laid the foundation of Indian frustration doctrine, holding that Section 56 of the Contract Act is a complete code, that 'impossibility' means impracticability striking at the root of the contract, and that a temporary war requisition did not frustrate a no-fixed-time development contract.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
High CourtHigh Court of Himachal Pradesh at Shimla
The Himachal Pradesh High Court held that a married daughter cannot be excluded from the deceased's 'family' for compassionate appointment solely on the ground of her marital status — such exclusion is arbitrary and violates Articles 14 and 15.
Decided on 23 February 2016, this judgment confirmed that the standard of proof in SEBI enforcement is the preponderance of probabilities, allowing manipulative conduct to be established by an irresistible inference drawn from the totality of circumstances.
Decided on 8 February 2018, the Supreme Court held that synchronised reversal trades in NIFTY options are a fraudulent and unfair trade practice under the PFUTP Regulations, and that proof of market impact or intent to manipulate is not a necessary ingredient.
Vivian Bose J.'s 1956 judgment is the perennial answer to prosecutorial over-reliance on Section 106 — it does not relieve the State of its primary burden of proving guilt, and 'especially' means exceptionally within the accused's knowledge.
Decided on 25 March 1998, this judgment held that both the person who hires a medical service and the beneficiary of it are 'consumers', allowing distinct awards to an injured child and to its parents arising from a single act of negligence.
On 19 October 1962, a five-judge Constitution Bench laid the foundation of the 'some evidence' rule in service discipline — holding that a High Court will not upset a departmental penalty supportable on a surviving finding of substantial misconduct, even if another finding is defective.
On 19 April 2024, a two-judge bench restated the narrow scope of the Order XLVII review jurisdiction, protected reserved forest land against a private title claim, and imposed ₹5 lakh costs recoverable from the officers who filed collusive affidavits.
On 3 October 2024, a three-judge bench struck down prison-manual provisions that segregated barracks and allotted labour by caste, holding them to violate Articles 14, 15, 17, 21 and 23, and ordered deletion of the caste column from prison registers.
The Orissa High Court held that before ordering investigation under Section 175(3) BNSS on a complaint of FIR non-registration, a Magistrate must consider the affidavit-supported application, make a proper inquiry, hear the police officer, and pass a reasoned order.
On 26 July 1994, a two-judge bench laid down the modern Indian framework for judicial review of government contracts — importing the illegality, irrationality and procedural-impropriety triad and insisting that courts review the decision-making process, not the decision.
On 5 February 2025, the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted anticipatory bail in a rape case on condition that the accused surrender all electronic devices and social-media passwords to the investigating agency, raising sharp questions of privacy and self-incrimination.
On 26 November 2025, the Karnataka High Court at Dharwad held that the Civil Rights Enforcement Cell has no power to investigate the validity of a caste certificate suo motu — its jurisdiction arises only on a reference from the District Caste Verification Committee.
On 13 February 2025, a two-judge bench held that the award of interest under Section 34 CPC is an equitable, discretionary relief and denied interest on a refunded principal because the claimant had engaged in forum shopping and procedural abuse.
On 11 July 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the second proviso to Article 311(2) — the three situations in which a civil servant may be dismissed without the constitutional inquiry — while holding the recorded satisfaction reviewable by courts for relevance and bona fides.
On 7 February 2025, a two-judge bench held that communicating the grounds of arrest under Article 22(1) is a mandatory constitutional requirement, the breach of which vitiates the arrest and entitles the accused to release despite statutory bail bars.
On 1 March 2025, a Full Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court annulled the 2015 notification exempting 62 forest species from the Transit Rules as ultra vires the Indian Forest Act and violative of Articles 14, 21 and 48-A.
On 26 October 1998, a two-judge bench held that the existence of an alternative statutory remedy is a rule of self-imposed discretion, not an absolute bar — and identified the recognised exceptions, including breach of natural justice, in which a writ will still lie under Article 226.
On 24 September 2025, the Karnataka High Court upheld the Centre's Sahyog Portal, holding that Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act is a standalone source of authority for information-blocking notices and that Shreya Singhal does not occupy the field.
On 21 May 2024, the Punjab & Haryana High Court permitted a married woman who conceived through her husband's non-consensual sexual assault, and who had filed for divorce, to terminate the pregnancy — only the pregnant woman's consent is required under the MTP Act.
On 12 May 2026, a two-judge bench expunged findings of cruelty and desertion against a dentist wife who had relocated from Kargil to Ahmedabad for tertiary medical care and to pursue her practice, holding that 'marriage does not eclipse her individuality' and retaining the divorce decree on the ground of irretrievable breakdown under Article 142.
On 29 April 2026, a two-judge bench dismissed thirteen writs, two SLPs and eight contempts in the long-running hate-speech batch, holding that constitutional courts cannot create criminal offences, that no legislative vacuum exists in the IPC/BNS framework, and that police failure to register a suo motu FIR is not, by itself, contempt.
On 15 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that Section 6(5) of the Hindu Succession Act 1956 is a narrow saving clause that protects pre-20 December 2004 partitions from the retroactive coparcenary amendment of 2005, but does not bar a partition suit and does not displace daughters' independent Section 8 rights — which accrued on the intestate's death and pre-existed the 2005 amendment. An oral partition among sons alone cannot defeat the daughters' succession share, and a second Order VII Rule 11 CPC application on identical grounds is barred by res judicata.
On 29 April 2026, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice A. S. Gadkari and Justice Ranjitsinha Bhonsale held that denial of a Police Clearance Certificate for a Public Service Vehicle badge — to a petitioner acquitted in the 26/11 case but separately convicted in the 2008 Rampur CRPF camp attack — is a reasonable restriction on the right to livelihood under Article 21.
On 24 February 2026, the Supreme Court restored a ₹600 crore Section 7 IBC petition, holding that informal restructuring with one debenture holder cannot defeat a debenture-trustee application that did not follow the Debenture Trust Deed's amendment procedure.
On 26 April 2026, a Karnataka High Court division bench held that show-cause notices under Sections 73/74 CGST Act are neither tax-period-specific nor financial-year-specific, allowing the Revenue's intra-court appeals and creating an inter-state split with Bombay and Madras.
On 22 April 2026, the CESTAT Principal Bench held that ECUs and sensors imported for assembly into Anti-lock Braking Systems are 'suitable for use' in motor vehicles and are denied the benefit of Notification 50/2017-Customs, but set aside interest and penalty on differential IGST for the pre-16 August 2024 period.
On 29 May 2026, a two-judge bench awarded ₹11 lakh in constitutional compensation for 24 days of illegal incarceration after a parole-release order, reiterating the 'obey first, appeal later' principle.
On 1 April 2026, a two-judge bench applied Mihir Shah to an NDPS arrest, holding that failure to supply written grounds of arrest before remand renders the arrest illegal even where section 37 ordinarily forecloses bail.
In January 2026, a Calcutta HC Division Bench upheld a divorce decree on the ground of cruelty under section 13(1)(ia) HMA, holding that a husband maligning his wife at her workplace, questioning her chastity and abusing her before colleagues strikes at the core of dignity protected under Article 21.
On 31 January 2026, a single judge of the Delhi High Court restrained Dabur from selling Cool King Thanda Tael in packaging deceptively similar to Emami's Navratna oil, reaffirming that trade-dress imitation is assessed on the totality of essential features.
On 15 April 2026, a two-judge bench inverted the conventional reading of the discharge–acquittal hierarchy, holding that a criminal-court discharge stands on a better footing than an acquittal and that disciplinary action on the same facts is barred once the armed forces have elected section 124 prosecution before a criminal court.
Delhi HC IP-Division Single Judge (Tejas Karia J.) upheld an interim injunction restraining Flipkart from using 'MARQ' and 'MARQ by Flipkart' for electronics, holding the mark phonetically, structurally and visually similar to prior-user Marc Enterprises' 'MARC' and that addition of the Flipkart house mark could not cure the deception.
Telangana HC DB (CJ Aparesh Kumar Singh and G.M. Mohiuddin J.) dismissed a PIL alleging ward-wise reservation between 70% and 90% in Telangana municipalities, finding the data did not substantiate the claim and reaffirming the horizontal-within-vertical reservation framework.
On 22 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that section 60(5)(c) IBC does not empower the NCLT to declare title in a disputed trademark when the approved resolution plan itself flags rival claims; trademark adjudication must be left to the competent civil court.
On 9 April 2026, the Supreme Court restated the Mobilox Innovations discipline: in a Section 9 IBC application the Adjudicating Authority enquires only into the existence of a plausible pre-existing dispute, not its merits; NCLAT cannot conduct a mini-trial to test the defence.
On 11 March 2026, a two-judge bench permitted withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from a thirteen-year permanent-vegetative-state patient, classifying clinically assisted nutrition and hydration as medical treatment under the Common Cause framework.
On 13 April 2026, a two-judge bench held that the safety of commuters on national highways is an integral facet of the right to life with dignity under Article 21, and issued sweeping directions under Article 142 to NHAI, MoRTH, NHIDCL and State PWDs — including a ban on highway-shoulder parking and 75-day compliance reporting.
On 29 May 2026, a two-judge bench quashed POCSO and rape proceedings against an estranged husband's family on findings of tutored 'parrot-like' testimony, and articulated for the first time at Supreme Court level an explicit ethical duty on advocates not to assist vexatious matrimonial-dispute prosecutions.
On 21 February 2026, the Karnataka High Court set aside a CIC order directing disclosure of a husband's income tax returns to his wife under the RTI Act, holding that IT returns are 'personal information' exempt under section 8(1)(j) and issuing gender-neutral guidelines for financial-disclosure discovery in maintenance proceedings.
NCLAT Principal Bench dismisses appeals against CCI's bid-rigging finding on the polyacetal protective-tubes suppliers to Indian Railways; reads 'punished accordingly' in Section 48(1) of the Competition Act 2002 (pre-2023 Amendment) to mean the individual penalty must match the enterprise penalty in scale, applied to the active partner's income.
On 29 May 2026, Justice Sachin Datta of the Delhi High Court delivered a 144-page judgment recognising the Right to be Forgotten as an integral facet of informational privacy under Article 21 and laying down a workable framework for de-indexing judicial records.
NCLAT Principal Bench (Bhushan CP, Mitra and Baroka) holds that where a Technical Guidance Agreement itself creates a minimum-royalty obligation, the absence of invoices does not defeat a Section 9 application; ₹63 lakh deposit ordered failing which CIRP admission follows.
Justice Neerja K. Kalson held that a maternal grandmother in actual care and custody of her granddaughter has sufficient eligibility to maintain a section 125 CrPC application on the minor's behalf where the parental relationship has broken down; the minor's statutory right to maintenance cannot be defeated by a technical objection to who instituted the petition.
On 21 April 2026, the Supreme Court held that a rejection of a jurisdictional plea under section 16 of the Arbitration Act is not an interim award and cannot be challenged under section 34 until the final award is rendered.
On 22 April 2026, the Supreme Court held that the mandatory bail conditions under section 480(3) BNSS apply only to non-bailable offences punishable with imprisonment of seven years or more, correcting widespread trial-court template practice.
Valkya Editorial··9 min
TribunalNational Green Tribunal (Principal Bench, New Delhi)
On 22 April 2026, the NGT Principal Bench held that the EIA Notification 2006 does not contemplate any 'deemed approval' of an Environmental Clearance, and directed the Tree Officer, MoEF&CC and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to act within eight weeks against a 61-acre Dwarka project that had felled approximately 2,000 trees without clearance.
On 24 February 2026, the Supreme Court held that a stale and procedurally defective Scheme of Arrangement under Sections 391–394 of the Companies Act 1956 cannot defeat a Section 7 IBC application; Section 238 IBC override extends to defunct schemes; a 28-year corporate dispute reaches doctrinal resolution.
On 19 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that the first proviso to Section 223(1) BNSS — requiring the accused to be heard before cognizance is taken on a complaint — is a mandatory, substantive Article 21 right; cognizance without compliance is void ab initio, and the rule applies to PMLA complaints where cognizance is taken on or after 1 July 2024 even if the complaint was filed earlier.
In March 2026, a Delhi HC Division Bench dismissed an LPA arising from a denied EWS/DG admission, holding that Article 21A and the RTE Act 2009 do not confer a constitutional right to admission in a particular school of choice once the academic year has ended and an alternative seat has been allotted.
On March 2026, a two-judge bench struck down the State's 40–60% disability eligibility cap for an Assistant District Attorney post, ordered the appointment of a 90%-disabled advocate, and imposed ₹5 lakh costs on the State.
On 17 April 2026, a Bombay High Court division bench declined to follow Milroc Good Earth and referred to a Larger Bench the question whether a single show-cause notice under Sections 73/74 CGST Act may span multiple financial years.
On 24 April 2026, a two-judge bench permitted the medical termination of a 15-year-old's 28-week pregnancy, holding that Article 21's reproductive-autonomy guarantee — particularly for a pregnant minor — takes precedence over the MTP Act's statutory 24-week outer limit, and that adoption cannot be offered as a substitute for forced continuation.
On 6 April 2026, a three-judge bench held that the inherent powers under section 528 BNSS can be invoked to quash criminal proceedings where unimpeachable material displaces the prosecution's factual foundation; the Bhajan Lal framework carries through unbroken into the BNSS era.
On 26 May 2026, an Allahabad High Court division bench quashed an FIR, chargesheet and cognizance order against an advocate prosecuted for conspiracy after he filed a GST statutory appeal on behalf of his client using the Electronic Credit Ledger for pre-deposit.
On 27 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that once the Committee of Creditors approves a resolution plan, the Successful Resolution Applicant cannot renegotiate its terms — to permit otherwise would cause the architecture of the IBC to crumble.
SEBI Whole-Time Member Kamlesh C. Varshney finds the former Executive Chairperson of Religare Enterprises guilty of insider trading in REL shares sold 21-22 September 2023 in possession of UPSI of the Burman Group's 25 September 2023 open offer; orders ₹1.99 crore disgorgement with 12% interest, ₹40 lakh penalty, and a two-year market-access restraint.
On 28 April 2026, a Madras HC Division Bench struck down Tamil Nadu G.O. Ms. No. 18 of 13 March 2026 restricting maternity leave for a third pregnancy to 12 weeks, operationalising K. Umadevi (2025) and anchoring maternity benefit as a facet of Article 21 reproductive autonomy.
On 6 April 2026, a two-judge bench set aside convictions under section 294(b) IPC for use of an expletive in a heated exchange, holding that mere abusive or vulgar language without sexual or prurient content does not amount to obscenity.
On 19 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that a directed crime-scene re-enactment limited to physical movements does not per se amount to testimonial compulsion under Article 20(3); such material is admissible as corroborative — not substantive — evidence. Conviction restored on circumstantial proof; death sentence commuted to life.
On 28 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that the recall power under Section 311 CrPC cannot be used to plug defence lacunae or re-traumatise a rape prosecutrix four years after her cross-examination.
On 9 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that mandating medical age-determination at the bail stage in POCSO matters is impermissible and urged the Centre to consider a 'Romeo–Juliet' clause for close-in-age consensual relationships.
On 30 April 2026, a Bombay High Court Division Bench quashed a ₹1,524 crore IGST demand on Tata Sons' satisfaction of the NTT Docomo arbitral-award settlement, holding that enforcement consent terms are not a taxable supply under section 7 CGST and narrowing Entry 5(e) of Schedule II.
On 11 March 2026, a two-judge bench held that creamy-layer status under the DoPT 1993 Office Memorandum cannot be determined solely on parental income; the status-based and income-based gates must be applied as distinct, and the DoPT clarificatory letter of 14 October 2004 was held ultra vires the substantive 1993 OM framework.
On 5 January 2026, the Supreme Court struck down customs duty on SEZ-to-DTA electricity as ultra vires and reproached the Gujarat HC for departing from coordinate-bench precedent.
On 27 May 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Chief Justice Surya Kant with Justice Joymalya Bagchi — upheld the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls across Bihar and West Bengal and refused to interdict the ongoing roll-revision exercise in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The Court held the SIR validly grounded in Article 324 read with the Representation of the People Act 1950 and the 1960 Rules, drew a doctrinal boundary between the Commission's electoral-roll citizenship inquiry and a Citizenship Act determination, and directed the Commission to forward to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs within four weeks the names of voters deleted on doubtful-citizenship grounds. A close reading of the ruling, its anchor in Mohinder Singh Gill and its place in the 2026-27 electoral cycle.
On 14 August 2021, a Bombay High Court division bench stayed Rules 9(1) and 9(3) of the IT Rules 2021 pan-India — holding that the Code of Ethics for digital news media travels beyond the rule-making power conferred by the IT Act and chills Article 19(1)(a) speech.
On 6 November 1996, a three-judge bench held that once the appropriate Government issues a Section 10 notification under the Contract Labour Act prohibiting contract labour in a process, the displaced workers stand automatically absorbed into the principal employer's establishment. The doctrine lived for five years before a Constitution Bench overruled it in SAIL.
On 28 August 1981, a three-judge Bench led by Fazal Ali J. struck down the first-pregnancy termination clause and the Managing Director's uncontrolled retirement-extension discretion in the Air India and Indian Airlines service regulations, while upholding the differential retirement age and four-year marriage-bar for female cabin crew on cadre-classification reasoning. A digest of the mixed ruling, the sex-plus doctrine it installed, the feminist critique that followed, and the modern anti-stereotype frame in Anuj Garg, Babita Puniya and Joseph Shine that has substantially overtaken its weaker holdings.
Valkya Editorial··14 min
TribunalNational Company Law Appellate Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi
NCLAT held on 9 February 2026 that a contested endorsement-fee instalment, plausibly linked to actual service-days, gives rise at most to a damages claim, not to operational debt under s.5(21) IBC; CIRP cannot be a recovery forum.
On 8 November 2024 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, by a 4:3 majority, overruled the 1968 ruling in S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India that an institution incorporated by statute could never be a minority institution under Article 30(1). The majority, authored by Chandrachud CJ on behalf of himself and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, held that statutory incorporation does not extinguish minority status — what matters is whether the minority community established the institution in substance, traced through ideation, purpose and implementation; and that the conjunctive 'establish and administer' formula in Article 30(1) permits proportionate, not exclusive, minority administration. Three separate dissents — by Surya Kant J, Datta J and S.C. Sharma J — would have preserved Azeez Basha. The question of whether AMU as it exists today satisfies the new establishment test was remitted to a regular bench.
On 20 January 1999 — the first Supreme Court application of Vishaka — Chief Justice Anand, writing for a two-judge Bench, restored the disciplinary dismissal of a Private Secretary at the Apparel Export Promotion Council that the Delhi High Court had reduced. The judgment held that sexual harassment includes any unwelcome sexually-determined conduct and does not require physical contact; that unwelcomeness is judged from the victim's perspective; and that writ-court review of disciplinary action in sexual-harassment cases is narrowly confined to procedural fairness and proportionality. A digest of the holding, the CEDAW-anchored reasoning, and the line that runs from Vishaka through Chopra into Section 2(n) of the POSH Act 2013.
On 10 April 2008, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 — providing 27% OBC reservation in centrally-funded higher education institutions including the IITs, IIMs, AIIMS and central universities — together with the 93rd Constitutional Amendment that inserted Article 15(5). The Bench extended the Indra Sawhney creamy-layer doctrine to OBC reservation in higher education, preserved the 50% reservation ceiling and required periodic review and quantifiable data. The validity of Article 15(5) for private unaided institutions was left for Pramati (2014) to settle.
Bombay HC (Aurangabad) quashes an FIR under the struck-down Section 66A IT Act years after Shreya Singhal, condemning police 'high-handedness' over a dead law.
On 12 May 2023, a two-judge Bench of Bopanna and Hima Kohli JJ. set aside the Goa University disciplinary inquiry against its former vice-chancellor for procedural defects in the Internal Complaints Committee and, more consequentially, issued nationwide directions to State Legal Services Authorities, the National Judicial Academy and statutory regulators for ICC capacity-building, compliance audits and training. A digest of the holding, the structural reasons the 2013 POSH Act needed a second judicial push ten years on, and the compliance architecture the directions installed.
Calcutta HC cancels the entire 2016 WBSSC panel of ~25,753 appointments where OMR manipulation made tainted and untainted inseparable; Supreme Court upheld it.
On 16 December 1983, a three-judge bench held that Article 21 derives its life-breath from the Directive Principles and laid the foundation for continuing-mandamus supervision of bonded-labour rehabilitation.
On 21 February 1978, a seven-judge Constitution Bench laid down the triple test for 'industry' under s.2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, sweeping hospitals, clubs, and charities into its coverage.
On 14 May 2024, the Supreme Court held that advocates' services fall outside the Consumer Protection Act, and doubted V.P. Shantha, referring the doctors question to a larger bench.
Bombay HC holds that setting aside an award under Sections 34/37 restores parties to the pre-award position, leaving the disputes free to be re-arbitrated.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi
CESTAT Delhi quashed a customs duty demand on Bharti Airtel, holding imported router components are 'parts' under CTI 8517 70 90 and rejecting limitation.
A 2-judge bench in October 2021 reversed Delhi HC and held GSTR-3B cannot be rectified beyond the Section 39(9) window — electronic credit ledger finality affirmed.
The Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling on the conjunctive 'or' in *Rule 69(1)(c)* of the CCS (Pension) Rules 1972. A 2-judge bench held that the embargo on the release of gratuity operates for the entire duration during which either departmental or judicial proceedings remain pending against a retired employee — and the embargo persists until both sets of proceedings conclude. Exoneration in the departmental proceeding does not lift the bar where a criminal trial on the same allegations remains pending. The doctrinal line draws a sharp separation from *Jaswant Singh Gill v. Bharat Coking Coal* (2007) on the *Payment of Gratuity Act 1972* and is to be read alongside *Kadir Khan Ahmed Khan Pathan v. MSWC* (2026 INSC 16) as a 2026 SC pair on the post-retirement disciplinary architecture.
On 2 March 2006, a three-judge bench disciplined the aspect doctrine, restated the dominant nature test for composite transactions, and set the stage for the GST architecture of composite supply.
A 3-judge bench held in October 2019 that the doctrine of mutuality survives Article 366(29A) for incorporated members' clubs — sales tax and service tax both fail, GST left open.
On 20 August 2015, a two-judge bench held that composite works contracts could not be taxed as services before 1 June 2007 for want of a charging section and a machinery provision.
On 7 April 2026 the Competition Commission held seventeen electrical contractors liable under s.3(3)(d) for cover bidding and bid rotation in APHCL tenders, but issued only a cease-and-desist direction under s.27(a) — calibrating contravention-finding against penalty-quantum where the contraveners are small enterprises with geographically circumscribed conduct.
On 27 February 2009 a three-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that neither the RDDBFI Act 1993 nor the SARFAESI Act 2002 contained any express provision giving the secured creditor priority over the State's statutory first charge for sales-tax or excise dues. The non-obstante clauses in Section 34(1) RDDBFI and Section 35 SARFAESI did not, by implication, displace specific statutory first charges in State revenue legislation. The State's first charge prevailed. The decision drove the 2016 Amendment Act, which inserted Section 31B RDDBFI and Section 26E SARFAESI and reversed the priority position for registered secured creditors prospectively.
The constitutional status of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical and dental admissions was decided three times over seven years. On 18 July 2013, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir struck down the NEET notifications by a 2:1 majority — Justice A.R. Dave dissenting — holding that MCI and DCI lacked statutory power to prescribe a uniform entrance test for private unaided minority institutions. On 11 April 2016, a five-judge Constitution Bench recalled the 2013 judgment for inadequate deliberation. On 29 April 2020, a three-judge bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Vineet Saran and M.R. Shah overruled the 2013 ruling and upheld NEET as a mandatory common entrance examination across all medical and dental institutions in India, including private unaided minority institutions. A close reading of the 2013 majority and dissent, the 2016 recall, the 2020 operative holding, the distinction between entrance examination and admission decision that preserves minority autonomy within the NEET-qualified pool, and the downstream Neil Aurelio Nunes arc on OBC and EWS reservation in NEET-PG.
On 6 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that aluminium shelving for mushroom cultivation falls under CTI 76109010 as 'aluminium structures', not under CTI 84369900 as parts of agricultural machinery.
On 8 November 2024, a five-judge bench held that unilateral arbitrator-appointment clauses in public-private contracts violate Article 14, overruling CORE I (2020).
Chennai ITAT quashed a reassessment, holding a section 148 notice issued by the Jurisdictional AO rather than faceless through the NFAC is invalid in law.
A three-judge bench fixed s.138 jurisdiction at the place of dishonour, overruling K. Bhaskaran — only for Parliament to reverse it via the 2015 amendment.
DRAT Kolkata upheld rejection of a bank-borrower settlement that excluded the auction purchaser and ignored a finalised DRT order setting aside the sale.
Madras HC (Madurai) holds a single judge cannot nullify a division bench; 'Angapradakshinam' is barred pending the Supreme Court's cognate Karnataka ruling.
On 19 April 2024, the Supreme Court held that a Hindu marriage is invalid without the requisite Section 7 ceremonies; a registration certificate alone confers no marital status.
On 28 January 1999, a three-judge bench struck down Rule 57-F(4-A) of the Central Excise Rules and held that MODVAT credit, once properly taken on receipt of inputs, becomes an indefeasible vested right that subordinate rule-making cannot extinguish.
Valkya Editorial··11 min
Supreme CourtGujarat High Court; Supreme Court of India
On 22 July 2022, a two-judge Supreme Court bench directed GSTN to reopen the common portal for two months, allowing every aggrieved taxpayer to file or revise TRAN-1 and TRAN-2 to carry forward pre-GST credit.
NCDRC set aside a ₹15 lakh award against Fortis Hospital: a medical-negligence claimant must prove breach, injury and causation; a bad result is not negligence.
On 11 May 2020, the Supreme Court applied the Anuradha Bhasin framework to J&K's 4G blackout, constituting a Special Committee and holding that restrictions must be calibrated territorially and temporally to what is actually necessary.
On 9 July 2024, the Supreme Court struck down a Google-Maps-pin bail condition, holding that any condition letting an agency track an accused's every movement violates Article 21 privacy.
On 17 November 1992, a five-judge Constitution Bench fixed the post-46th-Amendment ceiling on State works-contract VAT — value at the time of incorporation, with eight permissible deductions.
On 7 February 1966, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court (Hidayatullah J. authoring, with Gajendragadkar CJ, Wanchoo, V. Ramaswami and Satyanarayanaraju JJ.) settled the foundational canon of Indian insurance-contract interpretation: the court's task is to interpret the words in which the parties have expressed their contract — not to make a new contract, however reasonable, that the parties have not made themselves. A cover note issued 'subject to the usual conditions of the Society's policies' incorporates the full policy framework, including a termination clause, even before the formal policy issues. The judgment is the strict-construction landmark; supporting principles of uberrimae fidei and contra proferentem read alongside but trace their foundational SC authority to Mithoolal Nayak v. LIC (1962) for the disclosure duty. Sixty years on, every Indian insurance-contract dispute begins from the Chandumull Jain canon.
On 25 April 2024, the Supreme Court laid down a substance-over-form test under IBC s.5(8), holding an interest-bearing security deposit a financial debt despite a service contract label.
On 21 April 2014 a three-judge bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik, Surinder Singh Nijjar and Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla — with Patnaik J. pronouncing judgment — held that every iron-ore and manganese-ore mining lease in Goa had, in its renewed avatar, expired on 22 November 2007; that every mining operation thereafter was illegal; that the State's 'second renewal' orders had no statutory basis; and, drawing on the Justice M.B. Shah Commission Report, translated inter-generational equity into a financial mechanism by capping iron-ore excavation at 20 million MT a year, mandating e-auction of inventorised ores, and constituting the Goan Iron Ore Permanent Fund under Court supervision.
In February 2026, the Supreme Court held that the surviving partner in a mutual suicide pact is liable for abetment under section 306 read with section 107 IPC, closing a 23-year matter.
A five-judge Constitution Bench led by CJI Y.V. Chandrachud freed s.438 anticipatory bail from judge-made fetters, needing no FIR but barring blanket orders.
On 29 March 2019 a two-judge bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta suspended — not outright quashed — the 28 October 2015 environmental clearance for the Mopa greenfield airport in Goa, and remitted the matter to the Expert Appraisal Committee for re-examination within a month, on a record that disclosed non-disclosure in Form-1 of ecologically sensitive markers, an inadequate cumulative-impact assessment, and faunal markers including the South Asian river dolphin that the EAC's recommendation had not engaged. A practitioner's read on the duty of candour, the EIA rigour standard, and the suspension-for-re-examination remedial template.
In September 1952 the young Supreme Court laid down the foundational rule that circumstantial evidence must form a chain excluding every hypothesis but guilt.
On 16 December 1983, a three-judge bench held that HAL's contracts with the Indian Air Force for the servicing and overhauling of aircraft were integral works contracts and not severable into sale-of-goods and labour components, applying the Gannon Dunkerley dominant-nature framework in its last cycle before the 46th Amendment recast the field.
A 2-judge bench of the Supreme Court — *S.B. Sinha, J.* and *P.K. Balasubramanyan, J.* — held in April 2006 that *Section 529-A* of the *Companies Act 1956* created a *pari-passu* charge between workmen's dues and secured creditors as a class, but did not abolish inter-se priorities among secured creditors. Where Parliament has not expressly displaced the rule, *Section 48* of the *Transfer of Property Act 1882* applies — the first-created charge prevails over the second. The decision is not, strictly, a SARFAESI judgment; it is a Companies Act and TPA judgment whose inter-creditor reasoning has since been read into consortium-lending architecture, second-charge enforcement and — in academic commentary — into the *Section 53* IBC waterfall.
A five-judge Constitution Bench led by CJI S.A. Bobde framed binding directions to streamline cheque-dishonour trials, doubting Meters & Instruments on closure.
On 17 October 2024, a five-judge bench upheld Section 6A of the Citizenship Act 4:1, validating the 25 March 1971 Assam Accord migration cut-off, with Pardiwala J dissenting.
On 13 February 1996 — six months before *Vellore* — a Division Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy applied the absolute-liability doctrine of *Oleum Gas Leak* to five chemical units at Bichhri village in Rajasthan and operationalised the polluter-pays principle as a remediation-cost obligation. The judgment is doctrinally the antecedent to *Vellore* on polluter-pays, the first explicit reception of customary international environmental law into Indian law, and — in its 2011 execution arc — confirmed recovery of ₹37.385 crore plus interest from the polluters.
On 13 December 2021, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court issued notice on a writ petition seeking recognition of gig workers as workers within the Indian labour-law architecture, social security entitlements under the Code on Social Security 2020 Chapter IX, and operational implementation of the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act 2008 — a doctrinal classification question that remains pending.
On 7 November 1975, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down Clause (4) of Article 329A — the Thirty-ninth Amendment's attempt to retroactively withdraw the Prime Minister's election from judicial scrutiny — as a violation of the basic structure. On the merits, the Court reversed the Allahabad High Court and upheld Mrs Gandhi's Rae Bareli election, but on statutory grounds: the retroactive amendments to the Representation of the People Act had taken the very corrupt-practice findings out from under Sinha J's judgment. The judgment installed free and fair elections, judicial review of election disputes and the rule of law as basic-structure components.
On 4 March 2020 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court struck down the RBI Circular of 6 April 2018 that had directed banks and other RBI-regulated entities to refuse banking services to cryptocurrency exchanges. The judgment is the foundational Indian authority on proportionality review of regulator action affecting the Article 19(1)(g) right to trade — and is widely misreported as having legalised cryptocurrency, which it did not do.
A 2-judge bench of the Supreme Court — *Altamas Kabir, J.* and *Cyriac Joseph, J.* — held on 16 July 2009 that the Debts Recovery Tribunal's jurisdiction under *Section 17* of the *SARFAESI Act 2002* is not confined to the moment a *Section 13(4)* measure is taken; it extends to every action by the secured creditor in furtherance of *Section 13(4)*, including post-possession sale, sale confirmation and consequential steps. The DRT may scrutinise such actions on substantive grounds, set them aside, and — where illegality is established — restore the status quo ante. The decision is the foundational authority on the substantive (rather than merely supervisory) character of *Section 17* review.
On 9 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that shares received in an amalgamation in substitution of stock-in-trade are taxable as business income under Section 28; Section 47(vii) is confined to capital assets.
On 12 April 2021, a single judge of the Delhi High Court granted interim de-indexing of news reports of a prosecution that had ended in acquittal, applying the right to be forgotten under Article 21.
On 23 September 2024, the Supreme Court held that viewing and storing child sexual exploitative material is punishable under s.15 POCSO and s.67B IT Act, and replaced 'child pornography' with 'CSEAM'.
On 12 October 1999, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld State sales tax on the full price of food and drink served at restaurants and bars under Article 366(29A)(f), with no service-element split.
Calcutta HC holds a spouse who concealed a prior marriage and 498A history cannot win a cruelty divorce; clean hands and constructive desertion bar relief.
A 2016 Delhi High Court division bench refused to read constitutional restraints into a click-wrap consent transaction but moulded transitional relief — and the case has been pending before a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ever since.
On 9 April 2026 a Karnataka High Court division bench led by Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru dismissed a PIL against the MHA's 'Vande Mataram' school-recitation advisory as premature, holding that the advisory's permissive 'may' formulation, absence of penal consequence, and lack of any actual coercive enforcement against the petitioner left no live constitutional grievance to adjudicate.
On 1 May 2001, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court affirmed the Shambhu Nath Goyal threshold-pleading rule — management must, at the first opportunity in its written statement before the Tribunal, reserve the right to lead fresh evidence in the event the domestic enquiry is found invalid.
In 1957 a three-judge bench held that no rule requires a dying declaration to be corroborated; a true, voluntary declaration can by itself sustain a conviction.
On 18 February 1992, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the Tenth Schedule's constitutional validity by a 3:2 majority but struck down Paragraph 7 — the absolute finality clause — for want of ratification under the proviso to Article 368(2). The majority held that the Speaker, when adjudicating disqualification under the Tenth Schedule, acts as a Tribunal whose decisions are subject to limited judicial review under Articles 136, 226 and 227 on grounds of jurisdictional error, mala fides, perversity, violation of constitutional mandates and breach of natural justice — ordinarily only after the final order. Sharma and Verma JJ dissented in part on severability.
The Armed Forces Tribunal held a soldier retiring on superannuation, not only one invalided out, entitled to rounding-off of disability pension to 50% for life.
On 5 February 2015 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Dipak Misra and Prafulla Pant JJ., the principal opinion authored by Dipak Misra J. — held that a candidate's non-disclosure of pending criminal cases in the Form 26 nomination affidavit, where charges have been framed or cognizance has been taken, amounts to 'undue influence' within Section 123(2) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 and is therefore a corrupt practice rendering the election liable to be set aside under Section 100(1)(b). The judgment elevates ECI Form 26 disclosure to constitutional and statutory significance and extends the framework to local-body elections.
A Bombay High Court division bench split 1-1 in January 2024 on the constitutional validity of the IT Rules 2023 Fact Check Unit. The tie-breaking opinion of Justice A.S. Chandurkar in September 2024 struck down Rule 3(1)(b)(v) — vague, overbroad, and structurally inviting the state to be judge in its own cause.
On 6 July 2011, a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice Aftab Alam and Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan — within the T.N. Godavarman writ — dismissed the Shella Action Committee's challenge and upheld the revised environmental clearance, site clearance and Stage-I forest clearance granted to Lafarge for its limestone mine at Nongtrai, East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya. Part II of the judgment used the occasion to issue forward-looking guidelines under section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — directing the appointment of a National Regulator, the expansion of Regional Offices, the constitution of Regional Empowered Committees, GIS-based decision-support databases, the sequencing of forest clearance before environmental clearance, and mandatory public hearing. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the doctrine of proportionality, the anti-'fait accompli' principle, and the implementation record fifteen years on.
On 26 September 2013, a three-judge bench affirmed K. Raheja and held that pre-completion apartment sales by builders and developers fall within Article 366(29A)(b) as works contracts.
On 13 December 2000, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justice D.P. Mohapatra authoring, with Chief Justice B.N. Kirpal on the panel — set out the foundational architecture for repudiation of a life-insurance policy under the second part of Section 45 of the Insurance Act 1938. The judgment held that after the two-year incontestability window, an insurer can repudiate only by establishing cumulatively that the impugned statement was on a material matter, that the suppression was fraudulent, and that the policyholder knew at the time of making the statement that it was false. The burden is a heavy one; mere inaccuracy is not enough.
On 22 July 1992, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court (A.M. Ahmadi J. authoring, with M.M. Punchhi J. concurring) held that the Life Insurance Corporation is 'State' within Article 12 of the Constitution and is bound by Part III fundamental rights; that the right of reply — the right of a citizen to use the same forum that has carried criticism of his work to publish a rejoinder — is integral to the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a); and that non-statutory administrative guidelines cannot ground a restriction on speech under Article 19(2). The companion appeal concerning Tapan Bose's documentary 'Beyond Genocide' on the Bhopal gas disaster applied the same framework to Doordarshan. The judgment is the doctrinal bridge between Sukhdev Singh's Article 12 jurisprudence and the broadcasting-access cases that culminated in Cricket Association of Bengal.
On 28 April 2026 the Supreme Court — Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe — dismissed the appeal of Lucknow Public School, Eldico, which had refused admission to a child from a disadvantaged group duly allotted by the State Government under Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act and the UP RTE Rules 2011 for the 2024-25 pre-primary year on the school's plea of 'uncertainty' about eligibility. The ruling holds that once a State authority allots a child under the RTE scheme, the neighbourhood school's duty to admit is mandatory and immediate; the school cannot interpose its own eligibility scrutiny or procedural conditions; and any refusal or delay is unlawful. The Bench characterised the 25% RTE reservation as a 'national mission' rooted in Article 21A, hardening the operational architecture that Society for Unaided Private Schools v. Union of India (2012) had set in motion.
On 27 October 2021, a three-judge bench refused the Union's national-security plea and constituted an expert committee to investigate the Pegasus spyware allegations against Indian citizens.
On 27 August 2014 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — Lodha CJ, Dipak Misra, Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Bobde JJ., the principal opinion authored by Dipak Misra J. — declined to read an implied disqualification into Article 75(1) prohibiting the Prime Minister from advising the appointment of persons facing serious criminal charges. Where the Constitution had prescribed no bar, the Court held, judicial mandamus could not constrict the Prime Minister's discretion. The Bench held, instead, that the Prime Minister was under a 'constitutional expectation' — emanating from constitutional morality, good governance and the trust reposed in high constitutional office — not to recommend the appointment of persons against whom charges had been framed for heinous or serious offences. The judgment is the analytical seedbed of the constitutional-morality strand in modern Indian constitutional adjudication.
On 8 April 2004 a three-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 while striking down its Section 17(2) requirement that a borrower deposit 75% of the demand before access to the Debts Recovery Tribunal. The Bench also read into Section 13(3) a duty on the secured creditor to communicate, in writing, the reasons for non-acceptance of the borrower's representation — a safeguard that Parliament codified within months as Section 13(3A) by the 2004 Amendment Act.
On 13 December 1996, taking suo motu cognisance of a press report on a Himachal motel that had encroached on protected forest land and diverted the Beas, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court formally received the Public Trust Doctrine into Indian law — quashing the prior approvals and lease, ordering restitution at the motel's cost and issuing show-cause on exemplary damages. A digest of the doctrine, why the Court read it into Articles 21 and 48A, and how it has since travelled from rivers and forests to spectrum and coal.
On 30 December 1996 — the penultimate working day before his retirement — Justice Kuldip Singh, sitting with Justice Faizan Uddin, delivered the Taj Trapezium judgment: 292 enumerated industries within a 10,400 square kilometre polygon around the Taj Mahal were directed to switch to natural gas or relocate outside the Zone, with labour-protective relief for workers in relocated units. A digest of how the Bench operationalised the *Vellore* principles, why it created a monument-centric zoning template, and how the continuing-mandamus device powered later orders from CNG-Delhi to subsequent TTZ rulings.
A two-judge bench treated cheque dishonour as a compensatory offence and allowed closure on payment — a power the 2021 Constitution Bench later doubted.
On 25 July 2024, a nine-judge bench held 8:1 that mining royalty is not a tax and that States may tax mineral rights and mineral-bearing land, overruling India Cement.
On 21 March 2024, a three-judge bench recognised for the first time a right against the adverse effects of climate change, recalibrating Great Indian Bustard habitat protection.
On 2 May 2016, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — in a judgment authored by Justice A.K. Sikri — upheld the Madhya Pradesh Niji Vyavsayik Shikshan Sanstha (Pravesh Ka Viniyaman Avam Shulk Ka Nirdharan) Adhiniyam 2007, which subjected private unaided professional educational institutions to State regulation over admissions, fee fixation, reservation and eligibility criteria. The Bench formally articulated and applied the four-prong proportionality test — legitimate aim, suitability, necessity and balancing — as the working standard for assessing reasonableness of restrictions under Article 19(6) on the Article 19(1)(g) right of educational institutions. A close reading of Sikri J's reasoning, the post-T.M.A. Pai and Inamdar regulatory architecture, education as a noble occupation, the proportionality test's doctrinal afterlife in Puttaswamy, Aadhaar and Anuradha Bhasin, and the regulatory framework that NEET would inherit in CMC Vellore (2020).
On 2 December 1977, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that Article 324 vests the Election Commission of India with plenary and residuary powers wherever statute or rules are silent, but that those powers must be exercised consistently with natural justice and on reasons stated when the order is made — not on reasons supplied later by affidavit. The judgment also reaffirmed that Article 329(b) bars judicial interference with the election process between notification and declaration, leaving the election petition as the sole post-result remedy.
A three-judge bench held that each dishonour on re-presentation of a cheque founds a fresh s.138 cause of action, overruling Sadanandan Bhadran's rule.
On 18 October 2000, a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dr A.S. Anand, Justice S.P. Bharucha and Justice B.N. Kirpal — by a 2:1 majority — allowed the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to continue, subject to the condition that the dam height be raised in 5-metre slabs only after the Relief and Rehabilitation Sub-Group of the Narmada Control Authority certified that R&R for displaced families had been carried out pari passu with construction. The majority articulated a doctrine of narrow judicial review in major-project PILs, held the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award binding, and treated sustainable development as a balancing exercise. Justice Bharucha dissented. A digest of the holding, the bench's reasoning, the dissent treated as the moral compass of environmental PILs, and the subsequent doctrinal arc.
The NCDRC held National Insurance liable: repudiating a fidelity-guarantee claim four years after filing is itself a deficiency in service, whatever the merits.
On 31 October 2017, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously settled the methodology for computing 'just compensation' under the Motor Vehicles Act 1988. Authored by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, the judgment fixed the future-prospects framework on bright-line age and employment-status tiers, affirmed the Sarla Verma multiplier line, standardised the conventional heads with a built-in 10 per cent revision every three years, and brought a long period of MACT inconsistency to a close.
On 5 January 2004, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (V.N. Khare CJI, S.B. Sinha J. authoring, and S.H. Kapadia J.) settled the 'pay and recover' doctrine for motor accident claims involving a driver without a valid licence. The bench held that third-party statutory liability under Section 149 of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 persists even where the driver had no licence at the time of the accident; that the insurer must pay the third party first and may then recover from the insured under the breach-of-policy condition; that the burden lies on the insurer to prove deliberate breach as a precondition to recovery; and that the owner's contractual liability to the insurer is analytically separate from the insurer's statutory liability to the third party. The judgment installed the victim-protection architecture that runs through every subsequent motor accident decision.
On 19 August 1999, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court (Saghir Ahmad and R.P. Sethi JJ.) held that motor-insurance contracts must be strictly construed; that statutory permit conditions under the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 are read into the insurance contract where the policy expressly so provides; and that carriage of hazardous goods on a permit limited to 'unhazardous goods' takes the loss outside the scope of cover. The District Forum's dismissal of the insured's consumer complaint was restored; the State Commission and NCDRC awards that had overridden the policy terms on equitable grounds were set aside. The judgment is the motor-insurance extension of the Chandumull Jain construction canon and a disciplinary correction of consumer-forum overreach.
In October 1989 the Supreme Court gave its compact four-test restatement of the circumstantial-evidence standard, the working companion to the Sharad Sarda panchsheel.
On 10 March 2026, the Supreme Court held that a valuation report is not statutorily required for a section 66 capital reduction and that a NCLAT bench may have a majority of technical members.
On 18 September 1982, a two-judge bench held that payment below minimum wage is 'forced labour' under Article 23, opening Article 32 to construction workers at the Delhi Asian Games sites.
On 15 May 2024, the Supreme Court held that grounds of arrest must be furnished in writing at the earliest, declared the NewsClick editor's UAPA arrest illegal, and extended Pankaj Bansal beyond PMLA.
On 22 June 1984, a three-judge bench of Justice P.N. Bhagwati, Justice A.N. Sen and Justice Ranganath Misra held that wholesale state-domicile reservation in MBBS admissions is unconstitutional under Article 14 — every Indian citizen has only one domicile, the territory of India under Article 5. Institutional preference for graduates of the same institution was preserved as qualitatively distinct from domicile reservation; PG specialty admissions were directed to be on all-India merit. Saurabh Chaudri (2003) raised the all-India PG quota to 50% and Dr Tanvi Behl (2025) reaffirmed the framework against Chandigarh's UT-resident quota.
On 6 May 2014, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — in a unanimous judgment authored by Justice A.K. Patnaik — upheld both the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act 2002 (inserting Article 21A) and the 93rd Constitutional Amendment Act 2005 (inserting Article 15(5)). The Bench held that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and the special-provisions power under Article 15(5) do not apply to minority educational institutions, whether aided or unaided. Read with Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v. Union of India (2012) — which had already carved out the minority unaided exemption — Pramati completes a two-step minority exemption from the post-Article 21A reservation architecture. A close reading of Patnaik J's reasoning on basic structure, the Article 30(1) minority autonomy core, the relationship with T.M.A. Pai and Inamdar, the legislative reversal of Inamdar's holding on private unaided reservation, and the live September 2025 reference questioning the Pramati exemption.
On 25 September 2018 a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra — Misra CJ, Nariman, Khanwilkar, Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra JJ. — declined to judicially bar persons against whom charges had been framed from contesting elections, holding that the disqualification regime under Articles 102 and 191 read with Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act 1951 is exhaustive and that only Parliament can add. The Bench instead issued five binding directions on Form 26 disclosure, party-website publication and three-times newspaper-and-electronic-media publicity post-nomination, and urged Parliament to legislate decriminalisation. The framework was extended in Rambabu Singh Thakur (2020) — 48-hour publication and selection-reasons requirement — and enforced through contempt in Brajesh Singh (2021).
On 13 March 2003, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court struck down Section 33B of the Representation of the People Act 1951 — inserted by the 2002 Amendment to neutralise the Court's direction in ADR (2002) — as unconstitutional and violative of Article 19(1)(a). The Court reaffirmed that the voter's right to know the criminal antecedents, assets, liabilities and educational qualifications of candidates is part of the freedom of speech and expression, and read down Section 33A as supplementing — not supplanting — the wider disclosure regime articulated by the Court and the Election Commission. Justice Dharmadhikari concurred in part and dissented in part.
On 16 December 2015 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court rejected the Reserve Bank of India's standing defence that its inspection reports, willful-defaulter lists and supervisory communications with banks were protected from disclosure under Section 8(1)(e) of the Right to Information Act 2005 as fiduciary information. The judgment is the foundational Indian authority on regulator–regulated transparency and continues to shape RTI practice into the DPDP era.
Madras HC holds ISD input-tax credit is distributed when it becomes legally available under Section 16, not on the invoice date; Section 20 speaks of 'credit'.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalTelecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal
TDSAT held the 0.5% spectrum-sharing surcharge applies only to the shared band's SUC rate, not the operator's weighted-average rate, and quashed DoT's demands.
On 24 April 2019, a two-judge bench of Justices Dr D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta restored an insurer's repudiation of a life policy because the proposer had failed to disclose an existing Rs.11 lakh Max New York Life policy taken nine weeks earlier. The judgment, authored by Chandrachud J, holds that the existence of prior policies is a material fact bearing on aggregate risk concentration; because death and repudiation both fell within the two-year window, the pre-2015 second proviso to Section 45 of the Insurance Act 1938 had not yet attached, and the insurer needed only to establish materiality — not fraud.
On 20 March 2026, Justice Sachin Datta of the Delhi High Court quashed Look Out Circulars against NDTV founders Prannoy and Radhika Roy, holding that an LOC sustained for ~6 years without a chargesheet — and after the underlying agency itself closed one of the two FIRs — is an unjustified curtailment of the Article 21 right to travel.
On 13 December 2017, a three-judge bench ordered search engines to auto-block pre-natal sex-determination advertisements, recalibrating the Shreya Singhal intermediary safe-harbour for PCPNDT enforcement.
On 30 August 2001, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that no automatic absorption flows from a Section 10 notification under the Contract Labour Act. Air India Statutory Corporation was prospectively overruled. The remedy for displaced contract workers is industrial adjudication — not direct constitutional absorption.
A two-judge bench laid down an A/B/C/D categorisation of offences for bail and held that breach of Sections 41 and 41A CrPC entitles the accused to bail.
On 3 February 2026, a two-judge bench upheld a joint Section 7 CIRP against two intrinsically linked Bhasin entities running the Grand Venezia project, formally endorsing group insolvency at the apex level.
On 10 July 2009, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justice D.K. Jain authoring, with Justice R.M. Lodha on the panel — imported the English 'prudent insurer' test of materiality into Indian mediclaim jurisprudence and crystallised the insured's positive duty of disclosure at the proposal stage. The judgment held that a mediclaim policy is a contract of uberrimae fidei, that the insured is bound to disclose health conditions material to the risk regardless of whether the proposal form asks the specific question, and that consumer forums cannot override the uberrimae fidei architecture to reach equity outcomes.
The Supreme Court's first major pronouncement on the 2024 RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management. A 2-judge bench held three things: there is no inherent right to a personal or oral hearing before fraud classification because the determination is grounded in objective documentary evidence and a written show-cause-and-reply procedure satisfies natural justice; banks must furnish the full Forensic Audit Report to the borrower as the rule, with only narrow exceptions for genuinely third-party sensitive material; and the doctrinal distinction between fraud — which carries criminality — and wilful default — which does not — justifies the differentiated procedural protections under the two regulatory regimes.
On 7 November 2024, the Supreme Court invoked Article 142 to order liquidation of Jet Airways after the Jalan-Kalrock resolution plan stalled for roughly five years.
A 2-judge bench of the Supreme Court — *Dr D.Y. Chandrachud, C.J.* and *Hima Kohli, J.* — held in March 2023 that the principle of audi alteram partem must be read into Clauses 8.9.4 and 8.9.5 of the *Reserve Bank of India (Frauds Classification and Reporting by Commercial Banks and Select FIs) Directions 2016*. Classification of a borrower's account as 'fraud' by a Joint Lenders' Forum carries the consequences of civil death — credit-access debarment, reputational harm, director-disqualification fallout — and engages Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 21. The borrower is entitled to notice, to supply of the forensic audit report (or its conclusions), to an opportunity to be heard and to a reasoned order before classification. No prior hearing is required before the lodging of an FIR under *Section 154* of the *Code of Criminal Procedure*, which is a separate criminal-law step.
On 17 February 2020, a two-judge Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi held that the Ministry of Defence policy denying Short Service Commission women officers Permanent Commission in non-combat arms of the Indian Army — Army Service Corps, Ordnance Corps, EME, Signals, Intelligence Corps, AEC, JAG and the other streams in which women had been inducted as SSC officers — violates Articles 14, 15 and 16. The Court rejected the Centre's submissions about 'physiological limitations', 'domestic obligations' and unit cohesion as constitutionally impermissible gender stereotypes, set aside the 'staff appointments only' restriction in the 25 February 2019 policy letter, and directed that all serving SSC women officers be considered for Permanent Commission on terms equivalent to male officers with consequential entitlements. *Babita Puniya* installed the anti-stereotype framework that *Annie Nagaraja* (Navy) and *Lt Col Nitisha* (indirect discrimination) elaborated, and that *Lt Col Pooja Pal* (2026) operationalised through Article 142 structural compensatory relief.
In July 1984 a three-judge bench crystallised the five golden principles, the panchsheel, governing convictions resting wholly on circumstantial evidence.
On 19 April 2021, Justice Pratibha M. Singh of the Delhi High Court held that Section 21(4) of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 imposes a positive, justiciable statutory obligation on every insurer to provide mental-illness cover on the same basis as physical illness, and that any policy clause excluding or sub-limiting mental-illness cover is void to the extent of inconsistency with the Act. The judgment directed National Insurance to reimburse the petitioner's Rs.5.54 lakh schizoaffective-disorder claim and required the IRDAI to circulate the order to every insurer. It was the doctrinal foundation for the IRDAI's 18 October 2022 circular and for the 2024 Master Circular on Health Insurance Business.
On 24 March 2015, a two-judge bench struck down Section 66A of the IT Act as unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, reshaping India's online-speech and intermediary-liability law.
A 2-judge bench of the Supreme Court reversed a Karnataka High Court order that had set aside a SARFAESI auction sale and upheld the sale in favour of the bank. Rule 9(1) of the Security Interest (Enforcement) Rules 2002 — the 30-day publication-to-sale window — is mandatory but, being 'definitely for the benefit of the borrower', is waivable by the borrower's conduct or written consent. A borrower's letter consenting to extension of time is a valid waiver. The decision separately reinforces United Bank of India v. Satyawati Tondon (2010) on writ self-restraint: where Section 17 SARFAESI supplies an efficacious DRT remedy, the High Court ought not to entertain an Article 226 writ.
On 4 March 2024, a unanimous seven-judge bench held that legislators enjoy no immunity from bribery prosecution under Articles 105(2) and 194(2), overruling P.V. Narasimha Rao.
On 12 April 2012, a 2:1 majority of the Supreme Court — Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar — upheld the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, including the Section 12(1)(c) mandate that all recognised schools reserve 25% of Class I seats for children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections. The majority itself carved out the exemption for private unaided minority schools, on the reasoning that the mandate would impair the Article 30(1) right. Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan dissented. The two-step minority exemption began here; Pramati (2014) completed it for aided minority schools.
On 6 December 1991, a 4:1 Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that minority educational institutions — aided or unaided — retain the right under Article 30(1) to admit students of their own community on a preferential basis up to approximately 50% of seats, with the remainder filled by merit from the general pool. Justice Jagannatha Shetty's majority harmonised Article 29(2) with Article 30(1); Justice Kasliwal dissented. T.M.A. Pai (2002) later calibrated the rigid 50% cap institution-by-institution but left the autonomy floor intact.
In February 2026, the Supreme Court held that telecom spectrum is a sovereign resource held in public trust and cannot be subjected to IBC proceedings or the section 14 moratorium.
On 10 April 2006, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Sabharwal CJ and authored by Balasubramanyan J held that public employment must follow Article 16 — competitive, advertised, merit-based recruitment to sanctioned posts — and that temporary, casual, daily-wage, ad hoc or contractual appointees made outside that scheme acquire no fundamental right to regularisation however long they may have served. The judgment drew a sharp doctrinal line between 'irregular' and 'illegal' appointments, granted a one-time, fixed-date paragraph-53 exception for irregular appointees who had completed ten years of service on sanctioned posts as of 10 April 2006, and overruled *Dharwad PWD*, *Daily Rated Casual Labour v. Union of India* and *Ashwani Kumar v. State of Bihar*. The decision remains the gravitational centre of Indian regularisation jurisprudence two decades on.
On 1 April 1958, a five-judge Constitution Bench struck down the Madras works-contract sales tax as ultra vires Entry 48 List II — the wall that eventually forced the 46th Constitutional Amendment.
In 1999 the Supreme Court set out the three-possibilities rule on recovery of a concealed body and held that a false explanation is only an additional link in a chain.
The Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling that the right to dearness allowance, once incorporated into a state's statutory pay rules through a specific AICPI-linked mechanism, becomes a legally enforceable right that the executive cannot displace by memorandum — regardless of the state's financial constraints. Financial inability is not a defence to a statutory pay mechanism; executive economic policy cannot derogate from a statutory pay framework. The reasoning consolidates the doctrinal line that statutory pay mechanisms in public employment have the force of law, not the malleability of executive instruction.
On 11 May 2023 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously delivered Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary, Governor of Maharashtra — the apex court's most consequential Tenth Schedule ruling since Kihoto Hollohan. The Court held the Governor's 30 June 2022 floor-test call unjustified, declined to restore the Thackeray Government because of Uddhav Thackeray's voluntary resignation, struck down the Speaker's recognition of a rival whip on the principle that the whip is appointed by the political party and not the legislature party, and referred Nabam Rebia to a seven-judge bench. A close reading of the architecture, the doctrinal lines, and the unfinished business.
On 9 January 1991, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court — Justices K.N. Singh and N.D. Ojha — articulated the right to enjoyment of pollution-free water and air as part of the right to life under Article 21, and held that PIL standing in environmental matters does not require a personal-injury showing. On the facts the petition was dismissed as not bona fide and ₹5,000 costs imposed, but the legal principles — though technically obiter — have been treated as authoritative in every subsequent environmental Article 21 case.
On 23 November 2020, the Orissa High Court refused bail and articulated India's first judicial recognition of the right to be forgotten for survivors of sexual offences.
On 6 May 2014, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice R.M. Lodha struck down Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946 — the statutory revival of the executive 'Single Directive' that this Court had abrogated in Vineet Narain (1998) — as violative of Article 14. The judgment closes the doctrinal arc: an administrative immunity, struck down in 1997-98, cannot be reintroduced in legislative form when the underlying constitutional defect remains. The decision became the analytical scaffold for CBI v. R.R. Kishore (2023) and frames the still-pending challenge to Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 inserted by the 2018 amendment.
On 21 February 1975, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that statutory corporations created by Acts of Parliament — ONGC, LIC and IFCI in the consolidated appeals — are 'authorities' within Article 12, that regulations framed by such corporations under their enabling statutes have the force of law and bind both employer and employee as more than mere contract, and that public-sector dismissals made in breach of those statutory regulations are void, entitling the employee to reinstatement. Justice K.K. Mathew's concurring opinion laid the foundations of the 'instrumentality of State' doctrine that was elaborated in *R.D. Shetty* (1979) and *Ajay Hasia* (1981), and refined by the 7-judge Bench in *Pradeep Kumar Biswas* (2002). *Sukhdev Singh* remains the backbone of Indian public-employment jurisprudence.
By a 2:1 majority, SAT held that section 15J of the SEBI Act lets an adjudicator reduce a penalty below the statutory minimum in fit cases, over a dissent.
Delhi HC in June 2016 held service tax on under-construction flats invalid in absence of statutory machinery to separate the service component from land and goods value.
A five-judge Constitution Bench held that s.438 anticipatory bail need not, as a rule, be time-bound and can survive the charge-sheet, reaffirming Sibbia.
A 2-judge bench of the Supreme Court — *J.S. Verma, J.* and *K. Jayachandra Reddy, J.* — held in March 1992 that a bank has a general lien on fixed deposit receipts in its possession under *Section 171* of the *Indian Contract Act 1872*, supplemented by the contractual right to set-off, and that an FDR deposited under a covering letter authorising retention 'so long as any amount is due' cannot be attached by a third-party decree-holder ahead of the bank's lien. The judgment distinguished the general lien from the particular lien under *Section 170* and is the foundational authority for the banker-customer set-off architecture in India.
On 7 November 2024, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that recruitment criteria — the 'rules of the game' — cannot be altered after the selection process has begun, unless the rules so permit.
Bombay HC holds a national-security ban is a legitimate factor for the Registrar to refuse 'well-known' mark status; there is no vested right to recognition.
On 12 December 1996, a two-judge Bench of Justice J.S. Verma and Justice B.N. Kirpal in W.P.(C) 202/1995 held that the word 'forest' in the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 must be understood according to its dictionary meaning, irrespective of ownership or classification. The order constituted State Expert Committees, imposed felling moratoriums in the Northeast, J&K and other hill regions, protected workers in closed saw mills, and — through the formula 'this order is to continue, until further orders' — inaugurated what has become the longest-running environmental public interest litigation in Indian history. A digest of the foundational order, the 'deemed forest' doctrine, the subsequent architecture (CEC came in 2002, not 1996), and the doctrine's continuing engagement through 2026.
On 29 November 2006, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the SARFAESI Act 2002 and the RDDBFI Act 1993 are complementary, not mutually exclusive: a secured creditor may simultaneously prosecute a Debts Recovery Tribunal Original Application under Section 19 of the 1993 Act and a Section 13 SARFAESI enforcement without first withdrawing the OA. The doctrine of election does not apply. The first proviso to Section 19(1) of the 1993 Act does not require withdrawal as a condition precedent — the Section 13(2) notice is a show-cause step, not 'action' within the meaning of the proviso. Section 13(4) 'possession' extends to physical possession.
The Supreme Court's foundational decision on the doctrinal limits of compassionate appointment in public employment. A 2-judge bench held that compassionate appointment is not a constitutional or fundamental right but a narrow exception to the *Article 16* rule, designed to provide immediate financial relief to the family of a deceased employee — not to bestow the deceased's post as an 'heirloom' on his progeny. The judgment installed the junior-most-post discipline, the financial-condition examination, the reasonable-time requirement, and a clear limit on judicial direction outside the rules. Thirty years on, the *Sawant J* framework remains the operative anchor of compassionate-appointment jurisprudence, read together with *Canara Bank v. M. Mahesh Kumar* (2015), *Canara Bank v. Ajithkumar G.K.* (2025), and the post-*Umadevi* (2006) regularisation discipline.
On 10 February 2026, a two-judge bench ordered ₹19.28 crore IGST refund credited to the Consumer Welfare Fund, holding Section 54 CGST Act an exhaustive code and rejecting an 'alien modality' tariff-adjustment route.
On 13 September 2021, a two-judge bench upheld CGST Rule 89(5) and held that refund of unutilised ITC under inverted-duty structure is limited to input goods, excluding input services.
On 26 July 2010 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the High Court should not ordinarily entertain a writ petition under Article 226 challenging measures taken under the SARFAESI Act 2002 where the borrower has an efficacious statutory remedy before the Debts Recovery Tribunal under Section 17. The alternative-remedy rule is self-imposed judicial restraint, applied with 'greater rigour' in tax, cess and bank-recovery matters. The Bench castigated the routine grant of interim relief in such writ petitions and held that the High Court was 'wholly unjustified' in entertaining the writ at the Section 13(4) stage.
On 28 August 1985, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court read Section 2(oo) of the Industrial Disputes Act with the breadth its language demands — every termination by the employer is retrenchment unless it falls within one of the enumerated exceptions.
On 6 March 1973, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court gave Section 11A its foundational construction — the Industrial Tribunal's own satisfaction on guilt and punishment displaces the four-grounds restraint of Indian Iron & Steel, and the Tribunal may alter the punishment imposed by an employer.
On 30 June 2023, a single bench of the Karnataka High Court dismissed Twitter's challenge to MeitY blocking orders covering 39 URLs and 1,474 accounts — and imposed exemplary costs of fifty lakh rupees. Section 69A, the court held, authorises account-level blocking; foreign intermediaries have only limited Article 19 standing; and selective compliance attracts deterrent costs.
Valkya Editorial··10 min
TribunalCustoms, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi
On 28 April 1976, in the depths of the Emergency, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that a person detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act could not move habeas corpus because the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 stood suspended by the Presidential Proclamation under Article 359. Justice H.R. Khanna's sole dissent — that life and liberty are not the Constitution's gift to be taken away by it — cost him the Chief Justiceship. Forty-one years later, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, a nine-judge Bench explicitly overruled the majority and adopted the Khanna dissent as the constitutional position. A digest of the judgment, its setting, the dissent, the supersession, and the doctrine that has supplanted it.
On 15 February 2024, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme and the Finance Act, 2017 amendments to the RBI Act, Companies Act, Income Tax Act, and Representation of the People Act that had enabled it. The judgment held the architecture violated the voter's right to information under Article 19(1)(a), failed the proportionality test, and could not be sustained on the asserted ground of donor confidentiality. A digest of the bench, the doctrinal logic, the consequential directions to SBI to disclose bond purchase and redemption data, and what the judgment now requires.
On 5 May 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Alpha Corp Development Pvt Ltd v. Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority, authorised the lifting of the corporate veil during the CIRP of a holding company so that the land assets held by its SPV subsidiaries — which had been used by the group to shield real-estate landbanks from homebuyer claims — could be drawn into the resolution estate. Decided on the factual matrix of the Earth Infrastructures group and producing relief for over 4,200 homebuyers, the ruling is the first clear apex pronouncement that the corporate-separateness principle can be lifted in real-estate insolvencies where the multi-SPV structure has been used to defeat the substantive resolution objective. A close reading of the bench's reasoning, the Article 142 architecture, and what the ruling means for SPV-structured developers, homebuyer associations, and the 2026 RERA-IBC recalibration.
On 2 March 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners must, until Parliament legislates, be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India. Parliament's response — the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 — replaced the CJI with a Union Cabinet Minister, and the constitutional challenges to the Act are now pending. A digest of the judgment, the committee architecture, and the contested response.
On 10 January 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice N.V. Ramana — hearing challenges to the communications shutdown imposed on Jammu and Kashmir after the August 2019 abrogation of Article 370 — held that the freedom of speech and the freedom to practise trade and profession over the internet are protected under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution; that restrictions on those freedoms must satisfy a four-step proportionality test imported from Puttaswamy; that suspension orders under the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services Rules 2017 must be published and subjected to mandatory periodic review; and that Section 144 CrPC cannot be deployed to suppress legitimate dissent. The companion judgment in Ghulam Nabi Azad v. Union of India laid down the operative directions on Section 144.
On 24 August 2020 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and K.M. Joseph — held that DLF's failure to hand over possession of flats in 'Westend Heights', Begur, Bengaluru, within the contractual 36-month period constituted 'deficiency in service' under the Consumer Protection Act 1986; that flat-buyers were not confined to the meagre Rs 5 per square foot per month delay-compensation cap in the one-sided Apartment Buyer's Agreement; that the consumer forum could award just and reasonable compensation; and that 6% per annum simple interest on the entire amount paid was awardable in addition to the contractual delay compensation. The judgment crystallised the one-sided clause doctrine months before its formal articulation in IREO Grace Realtech (January 2021).
On 28 March 2018, a three-judge Bench held in Asian Resurfacing of Road Agency v. CBI that interim stays of trial granted by a High Court in civil and criminal proceedings would automatically vacate after six months, unless extended by a speaking order. The rule operated for almost six years before, on 29 February 2024, a five-judge Constitution Bench in High Court Bar Association, Allahabad v. State of UP held it constitutionally unsustainable and overruled it. A digest of both judgments, the practitioner architecture they produced, and the constitutional position that now obtains.
On 7 October 2003, a two-judge bench of Justices Ruma Pal and B.N. Srikrishna reversed the Delhi High Court and upheld CBDT Circular No. 789 of 13 April 2000 — which had directed assessing officers to treat a Tax Residency Certificate issued by Mauritian authorities as sufficient evidence of residence and beneficial ownership for the purposes of the India–Mauritius Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement. The bench held that treaty shopping is not per se illegal in the absence of an express limitation-of-benefits clause, that the CBDT acted within its Section 119 power, and that Chinnappa Reddy J.'s anti-avoidance observations in McDowell (1985) were obiter and did not displace the Westminster principle in Indian law. A digest of the bench, the architecture of the DTAA, the doctrinal contribution, and the post-judgment arc through the 2016 Protocol, GAAR, and Tiger Global.
On 6 September 2012, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court overruled Bhatia International and Venture Global and held that Part I of the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996 applies only to arbitrations seated in India. The judgment prospectively rewrote the boundary between domestic-court supervision and party-chosen foreign seats, aligned Indian law with the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention, and laid the analytical scaffolding on which Indus Mobile, BGS SGS Soma JV and PASL Wind Solutions were later built.
On 18 May 2026 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in Bansal v. Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, set aside the 2018 single-judge SEP infringement decree by Justice Manmohan on Philips' DVD-related Indian Patent IN 184753 and articulated, for the first time at the Division Bench level in India, the evidentiary baseline a Standard-Essential Patent holder must meet at trial. The DB held that essentiality is a fact requiring proof through claim-charts mapped to the standard and through cross-examinable witnesses; that Philips' right was exhausted under Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act 1970 because the DVD components had been put on the market in China by Philips' authorised licensees; and that comparable-licence evidence is required to discharge the FRAND-rate burden. The ruling resets the FRAND-evidence architecture for the Ericsson, Nokia, Dolby and Malikie actions still on foot.
On 15 July 2014 a two-judge Division Bench of the Bombay High Court (Mohit S. Shah, C.J., presiding, with M.S. Sanklecha, J.) affirmed India's first — and to date only successful — compulsory-licence grant under *Section 84* of the *Patents Act 1970*. The decision sustained the Controller's 9 March 2012 order granting Natco Pharma a compulsory licence over Bayer's IN 215758 (Sorafenib Tosylate, sold as Nexavar) on all three independent grounds under *Section 84(1)* — reasonable requirements of the public unmet, price not reasonably affordable, and patent not worked in India. The Special Leave Petition was dismissed on 12 December 2014 with the questions of law left open. The judgment, read with the subsequent rejections of the BDR Pharma (Dasatinib) and Lee Pharma (Saxagliptin) applications, defines the practical contours of Indian compulsory licensing in the post-TRIPS public-health architecture.
On 23 July 2019 a two-judge bench of Arun Mishra and U.U. Lalit, JJ. delivered the 270-page Amrapali judgment in exercise of plenary writ jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution. Acting on the findings of a court-ordered Forensic Audit Report, the Court cancelled the Amrapali Group's RERA registration, cancelled the Noida and Greater Noida lease deeds, appointed NBCC (India) Ltd at an 8% commission to complete the stalled projects, appointed Senior Advocate R. Venkataramani as Court Receiver, directed the Enforcement Directorate to investigate offences under FEMA and PMLA, and ordered ICAI disciplinary action against the statutory auditor. Dues recoverable from the authorities and banks were ringfenced to attached promoter assets and were held not to be a charge on the homebuyers or the projects.
On 15 April 2011, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justice R.V. Raveendran writing — supplied the first authoritative analytical framework for arbitrability under the 1996 Act. The judgment installed the in rem / in personam taxonomy, enumerated six classic non-arbitrable categories, and held that a suit for enforcement of a mortgage by sale under Section 67 of the Transfer of Property Act 1882 is non-arbitrable. Booz Allen is the foundational anchor on which Vidya Drolia's four-fold test and Cox & Kings's group-of-companies doctrine were later built.
On 15 April 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan held that a bank receiving cheques for collection acts as an agent of the customer and is bound to present the instruments within the validity period; the failure to do so — resulting in the cheques becoming stale, without a reasonable explanation — constitutes deficiency in service under the Consumer Protection Act. The Court moderated the compensation, reducing the consumer-commission award from 10 per cent to 6 per cent of the cheque amount with 6 per cent interest. A digest of the holding and the doctrinal architecture for banking-agent liability.
On 9 January 2025, a two-judge bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan clarified the relationship between the Debt Recovery Tribunal's jurisdiction under Section 17 of the SARFAESI Act and the civil courts' residual jurisdiction over questions of title, partition, and the validity of pre-enforcement deeds. The judgment holds that the DRT's exclusive jurisdiction extends to the legality of Section 13(4) measures — and no further. Questions of ownership and the validity of deeds predating the bank's enforcement remain triable by civil courts under Section 9 of the CPC.
On 15 December 2016, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Madan B. Lokur, J. (authoring), R.K. Agrawal, J. and Dr D.Y. Chandrachud, J. — held that a two-tier arbitration clause, providing for first-tier arbitration in India and an appellate second-tier ICC arbitration in London, is valid and permissible under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. The bench resolved a decade-long impasse left by a 2006 two-judge split between Sinha J. and Tarun Chatterjee J., and reaffirmed party autonomy as the lodestar of the 1996 Act. A close reading of the bench, the contract, the doctrinal contribution on appellate arbitration, and the post-judgment arc through Centrotrade III (June 2020) which held the resulting foreign award enforceable under Part II.
On 2 November 2018, Pratibha M. Singh, J. of the Delhi High Court held that the luxury reseller darveys.com was not a passive intermediary under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act 2000 and could not claim the safe-harbour against trade-mark infringement. The judgment enumerated some twenty-six indicia of active involvement — paid membership, curated marketplace, control over which sellers could list, authenticity guarantees, logistics handling, non-disclosure of seller identities and use of the Louboutin name and Mr. Louboutin's image as meta-tags. A close reading of the active-versus-passive intermediary test under Section 79 read with Rule 3 of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules 2011, the post-judgment doctrinal arc through Amazon Seller v. Modicare and the Division Bench gloss on Amway v. 1MG.
On 15 September 2014, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — R.M. Lodha C.J., J.S. Khehar J., J. Chelameswar J., A.K. Sikri J. and R.F. Nariman J. — unanimously held that the proviso to Section 113 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, imposing a surcharge on tax computed in block assessments and inserted by the Finance Act 2002 with effect from 1 June 2002, operates prospectively only and does not apply to block periods ending before that date; the bench overruled the contrary view in CIT v. Suresh N. Gupta (2008) that had treated the proviso as clarificatory. The judgment is the modern leading authority on the presumption against retrospective operation of tax statutes — particularly statutes that levy a new tax, increase a rate, or impose a surcharge. A digest of the bench, the statutory architecture, the doctrinal contribution on the substantive–clarificatory distinction, and the post-judgment arc through Sankaracharya University (2023) and the GST retrospective-amendment challenges now mounting in High Courts.
On 15 November 2019 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered the most consequential IBC judgment of the post-*Swiss Ribbons* era. The Bench held that the Committee of Creditors' commercial wisdom on the distribution of resolution-plan proceeds — including unequal treatment of financial and operational creditors — is paramount; that the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal had erred in directing equal pro-rata distribution; that the *Section 53* waterfall is a guide but the CoC retains discretion subject to the *Section 30(2)(b)* minimum-liquidation-value floor; that the 'mandatorily' in the amended *Section 12* 330-day proviso is to be read down as directory in exceptional cases; and that the resolution applicant takes the corporate debtor on a 'clean slate' — claims not in the plan stand extinguished.
On 6 December 2023 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in Cox & Kings Ltd v. SAP India Pvt Ltd, affirmed the group-of-companies doctrine as a valid and continuing part of Indian arbitration jurisprudence but re-anchored its legal foundation — moving it away from the textual hook of 'claiming through or under' in Sections 8 and 45, on which Chloro Controls had rested it, and into the consent-based definition of 'party' in Section 2(1)(h) read with Section 7. A close reading of CJI Chandrachud's judgment, the five-factor consent inquiry, the prima facie / final-call division of labour between referral court and tribunal, and what the doctrine looks like in post-Cox & Kings practice.
On 28 September 2001, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the constitutional validity of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 — but read its principal provision as requiring the husband to make reasonable and fair provision for the maintenance of the divorced wife beyond the iddat period, including for her future. The judgment is the foundational doctrinal contribution that preserved the maintenance architecture of Shah Bano through interpretation of the 1986 Act, and supplies the doctrinal frame within which the more recent Mohd Abdul Samad v. State of Telangana operates.
On 10 April 2026, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela of the Delhi High Court granted an ex parte ad interim injunction restraining a Bhopal-based publisher from using 'The Pioneer' trademark and from copying the contents of the plaintiff's newspaper. The judgment, in CS(COMM) 338/2026, treats the defendant's conduct — following the revocation of a 2004 Memorandum of Understanding — as a composite trademark-and-copyright infringement under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Copyright Act, 1957. A digest of the facts, the relief, and what the order tells practitioners about the interim-injunction architecture in newspaper IP matters.
On 22 May 2026, Justice Mini Pushkarna of the Delhi High Court held that the use of a registered trademark as a bidding keyword to trigger sponsored advertisements constitutes infringement under Section 29(6)(d) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 — and that Google could not, on the record before the Court, claim safe harbour under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The judgment, which awarded damages of ₹30 lakh in favour of Hindware, sets the operative position on keyword-advertising trademark infringement in India. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal logic, and the implications for platforms and advertisers.
On 21 April 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja of the Delhi High Court convicted advocate Gulshan Pahuja — who runs the YouTube channel 'Fight 4 Judicial Reforms' — of criminal contempt under Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, for content that the Court held was designed to scandalise the judiciary as a whole. On 16 May 2026, the same Bench sentenced Pahuja to six months' simple imprisonment and a fine of ₹2,000 in each of two criminal contempt cases. The judgment is a recent doctrinal application of the line between fair criticism and contempt of court in the digital-content environment.
On 4 May 2026 the Supreme Court — 2026 INSC 447 — held that the threshold question of 'membership' for the oppression-and-mismanagement jurisdiction under sections 397-398 of the Companies Act 1956 (and, by parity, sections 241-242 of the Companies Act 2013) must be read through the wider definitional framework of section 2(27) of the 1956 Act (equivalently section 2(55) of the 2013 Act), and not through the narrow technical formulation of section 41(2) of the 1956 Act. Investors who have contributed share consideration but face delays in formal register entry cannot be defeated by technical defences to the petition's maintainability — a holding particularly consequential for closely held companies where register-of-members entries are routinely contested.
On 9 December 2016, the Delhi High Court Division Bench — Pradeep Nandrajog, J. and Yogesh Khanna, J. — held that Section 52(1)(i) of the Copyright Act 1957, which permits reproduction of any work by a teacher or a pupil in the course of instruction, is to be read purposively and broadly and is not confined to physical classroom acts. Course-pack preparation by a university for its students falls within Section 52(1)(i) provided the inclusion is justified by the purpose of instruction. The DB articulated a fairness test rooted in the extent justified by purpose — qualitative and quantitative — and declined to transplant the US four-factor fair-use test. The suit was restored to the single judge for fact-trial; the publishers withdrew it on 9 March 2017.
The Supreme Court's review judgment of 10 December 2018, authored by Justice Ashok Bhushan for a two-judge bench (Bhushan + U.U. Lalit JJ), holds that the 2015 amendment to Section 8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 — making reference to arbitration mandatory 'notwithstanding any judgment, decree or order' — does not displace the regime of special legislation that creates non-arbitrable in rem statutory remedies. An arbitration clause in a builder-allottee agreement does not oust the jurisdiction of the consumer forum; the consumer remedy is at the consumer's option. The NCDRC Larger Bench order of 13 July 2017 was approved. The reasoning has since travelled into the RERA-CPA interface through Imperia Structures (2020) and IREO Grace Realtech (2021), with HC divergence emerging in 2024-26.
On 11 May 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi has legislative and executive power over 'services' — the administrative architecture of public servants serving the Delhi Government — with the exception of public order, police, and land, which remain reserved to the Union under Article 239AA. The judgment supplied a federalism architecture for the Union Territory of Delhi. A week later, Parliament responded with the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Ordinance, 2023, replaced by the Amendment Act, 2023, substantially reversing the judgment's operational effect. A digest of the judgment, the constitutional framework, and the legislative response.
On 27 November 2019, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Rohinton Fali Nariman, J. (authoring), Surya Kant, J. and V. Ramasubramanian, J. — struck down Section 87 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 (inserted by the 2019 Amendment) as manifestly arbitrary and violative of Article 14. The decision restored the no-automatic-stay regime built by the 2015 amendments and confirmed by BCCI v. Kochi Cricket (2018): a Section 34 challenge does not, of itself, stay the enforcement of an arbitral award; the award-debtor must apply separately for a stay under Section 36(3). A close reading of the architecture, the legislative-reversal pattern that brought Section 87 into being, the manifest-arbitrariness reasoning, and the practitioner discipline now stable on independent stay applications.
On 24 April 2026, the Supreme Court held that an unsuccessful party in arbitration can invoke Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 for interim relief at the post-award stage, pending Section 34 proceedings. The Court rejected the 'fruits of the award' doctrine that had restricted Section 9 to successful parties, reading Section 9's text — 'any party to an arbitration agreement' — to authorise the unsuccessful party to seek interim measures, subject to 'care, caution and circumspection'. The ruling resolves a long-standing High Court conflict and recalibrates the post-award practitioner architecture.
On 2 November 2020 a two-judge bench of U.U. Lalit and Vineet Saran, JJ. — the judgment authored by Lalit J. — held that Section 79 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, which bars the civil-court jurisdiction over matters within the RERA Authority's remit, does not oust the jurisdiction of the consumer fora under the Consumer Protection Act 1986. The NCDRC and consumer fora are not 'civil courts' within the meaning of the Code of Civil Procedure; the Section 71(1) proviso, Section 88 and the 'without prejudice' framing of Section 18 of RERA preserve the consumer remedy alongside the RERA architecture. The choice of forum vests in the allottee, and the entitlement to maintain an action runs from the builder-buyer agreement date and not from the RERA registration date.
On 11 December 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously upheld the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the constitutional re-ordering of Jammu and Kashmir effected by the Presidential Orders of August 2019 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. Three judgments were delivered — by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud (for himself, Justice Gavai and Justice Surya Kant), Justice Kaul, and Justice Khanna — converging on the result and disagreeing only on the route. A digest of the judgments, the constitutional questions they answered, and the doctrinal architecture they leave.
On 19 April 2017, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the parties' designation of a seat of arbitration operates as an exclusive jurisdiction clause — vesting the courts at the seat with exclusive supervisory jurisdiction even where no cause of action arose there. The decision imported the international seat-as-jurisdiction principle into Indian domestic arbitration and supplied the analytic engine for the seat-versus-venue line in BGS SGS Soma JV, Mankastu Impex and Hardy Exploration.
The Supreme Court's first substantive ruling on the architecture of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016. A 2-judge bench held that the IBC, enacted under Entry 9 of List III, prevails over inconsistent State moratoria through *Section 238* read with Article 254; the *Section 7* admission enquiry is narrow — confined to whether a financial debt and default exist — and once those facts are made out the National Company Law Tribunal must admit, with no residual 'I deem fit' discretion. The decision framed the post-2016 'paradigm shift' away from debtor-in-possession, was diluted by *Vidarbha* in 2022, and was substantially restored by *M. Suresh Kumar Reddy* in 2023.
On 29 March 2023 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in Intex Technologies (India) Ltd v. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, delivered the country's first authoritative appellate framework on standard-essential patents and FRAND licensing. The judgment by Justices Manmohan and Saurabh Banerjee dismissed Intex's appeal, allowed Ericsson's cross-appeal, doubled the royalty security ordered by the Single Judge, held that injunctions and pro-tem royalty deposits are available to SEP holders against unwilling licensees, ruled that parallel CCI proceedings do not oust Patent Act jurisdiction, and established the 'willing licensee' inquiry as the central test in Indian SEP litigation. A close reading of the Bench's reasoning, the two-way street it builds between SEP holders and implementers, and the bespoke Indian remedy of pro-tem security that now travels through Nokia v. OPPO, Ericsson v. Lava and the wider Delhi SEP docket.
On 11 January 2007, a nine-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that any law inserted into the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution after 24 April 1973 — the date of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment — is open to judicial scrutiny on the ground that it violates the basic structure or the Fundamental Rights forming part of the basic structure. The judgment closes the doctrinal loop that Kesavananda had opened: the Ninth Schedule cannot operate as a constitutional refuge from the basic structure doctrine.
On 11 January 2021 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Indu Malhotra and Indira Banerjee — held that one-sided clauses in an apartment buyer's agreement, heavily favouring the developer through asymmetric cancellation, token delay compensation and restricted refund rights, constitute 'unfair trade practice' within Section 2(1)(r) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The allottee is not bound by such clauses; the developer cannot enforce one-sided forfeiture; the consumer forum has jurisdiction to refuse enforcement; and where the developer fails to deliver possession, the allottee is entitled to refund with interest. The judgment formalises the 'one-sided clause' doctrine first articulated in Wing Cdr Arifur Rahman Khan v. DLF Southern Homes (August 2020) and aligns with Emaar MGF v. Aftab Singh (2018) on the preservation of statutory remedies against private contractual ouster.
On 10 June 2020 Justice C. Saravanan of the Madras High Court Original Side, in ITC Limited v. Nestle India Ltd, dismissed ITC's passing-off action against Nestle's use of 'Magical Masala' on Maggi noodle packaging. The judgment holds that 'Magic Masala' and 'Magical Masala' are laudatory and descriptive — 'magic' and 'magical' are common laudatory epithets, 'masala' is a generic flavour descriptor — and that neither party used these terms as trade-mark identifiers. The dominant marks were 'Sunfeast Yippee!' and 'Maggi'; the disputed phrases functioned as flavour-variant descriptors. A close reading of the descriptive-use vs trade-mark-use distinction, the post-Marico v. Agro Tech architecture for laudatory marks, and what the judgment tells brand owners about packaging hierarchy.
On 7 November 2022, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 3:2 that the Constitution (One Hundred and Third Amendment) Act, 2019 — which had inserted clauses authorising the State to provide reservation of up to 10 per cent for economically weaker sections, additional to the existing reservation under Articles 15(4), 15(5) and 16(4) — did not breach the basic structure of the Constitution. Justices Maheshwari, Trivedi and Pardiwala wrote separate concurring opinions for the majority; Justice Ravindra Bhat wrote a dissent on behalf of himself and Chief Justice U.U. Lalit. A digest of the bench, the holdings, the dissent, and the doctrinal arc of reservation jurisprudence after the EWS judgment.
On 26 September 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that the creamy-layer principle applies to reservation in promotion for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — and read down the requirement, articulated in M. Nagaraj (2006), that States collect quantifiable data to demonstrate backwardness of SC/STs as a condition for providing such reservation. The unanimous judgment of Justice Nariman recalibrates the doctrinal architecture between Indra Sawhney, M. Nagaraj, and the SC/ST promotion reservation regime. A digest of the question, the holding, the doctrinal logic, and the lineage.
On 26 September 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 was constitutionally valid in substantial part, that its passage as a Money Bill was within Parliament's competence, and that Section 7 — the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with benefits — was sustainable. Section 57 — permitting private entities to seek Aadhaar authentication — and parts of Section 33(2) were struck down. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud dissented entirely. A digest of the judgment, the Money Bill question, and the doctrinal arc from the 9-judge privacy ruling through this 5-judge substantive engagement.
On 5 February 2019 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the Committee of Creditors' commercial wisdom in approving or rejecting a resolution plan by the requisite voting majority is non-justiciable. The National Company Law Tribunal's judicial review under *Section 31* is confined to *Section 30(2)* compliance — it cannot second-guess the CoC's commercial judgment. On rejection of all plans by the CoC, the Adjudicating Authority is obliged to initiate liquidation under *Section 33(1)*. The decision is the foundational articulation of the commercial-wisdom doctrine that organises post-2019 IBC jurisprudence.
On 4 February 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran — set aside the NCDRC's order of 23 August 2023 holding that a consumer complaint was maintainable despite prior RERA proceedings. The Court held that where two concurrent fora are available for the same cause of action, the homebuyer must elect one; having elected RERA, the homebuyer cannot retract to a parallel consumer-forum remedy on the same grievance. The decision narrows the concurrent-jurisdiction rule of Imperia Structures (2020) by overlaying election-of-remedies discipline — concurrent jurisdiction is preserved as a menu choice, not a buffet allowing migration mid-litigation. Concurrent jurisdiction at the outset is preserved; what is foreclosed is successive recourse to a second forum after election.
On 24 April 1973, a 13-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — the largest ever assembled in Indian constitutional adjudication — held by a 7:6 majority that Parliament's amending power under Article 368 does not extend to altering the basic structure of the Constitution. The petition had begun as a religious-property challenge by the head of the Edneer Mutt; it ended as the most consequential constitutional ruling in the Republic's history. A digest of the bench, the line-up of opinions, the doctrinal contribution that has since governed every constitutional amendment, and the cases that have applied it.
On 30 May 2022 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd v. A. Balakrishnan, held that the liability arising from a Recovery Certificate issued by a Debts Recovery Tribunal under Section 19 of the RDDBFI Act is a 'financial debt' within the meaning of Section 5(8) of the IBC, that the holder of such a Certificate is a 'financial creditor' under Section 5(7) entitled to file a Section 7 application, and — most consequentially for limitation practice — that the Certificate creates a fresh cause of action so that limitation under Article 137 of the Limitation Act runs from the date of its issuance, not from the date of the original default. A close reading of the bench's reasoning, its extension of the Dena Bank v. C. Shivakumar Reddy line, and what the ruling has come to mean for banks, ARCs and corporate debtors at the s.7 admission stage.
On 18 March 1997 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment authored by Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi, struck down clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B to the extent they excluded the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts and of the Supreme Court over decisions of administrative tribunals. Judicial review under Articles 32, 226 and 227 was held to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution, tribunals were repositioned as courts of first instance rather than substitutes for High Courts, and the 'alternative institutional mechanism' theory of S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987) was partly overruled.
On 21 May 2021 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Lalit Kumar Jain v. Union of India, upheld the Central Government's MCA Notification of 15 November 2019 selectively bringing Part III of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code into force for personal guarantors of corporate debtors as valid conditional legislation, and held that approval of a resolution plan for a corporate debtor under Section 31 does not, of itself, discharge a personal guarantor — surety liability rests on the independent footing of Section 128 of the Contract Act. A close reading of the judgment authored by Justice Ravindra Bhat, the doctrinal architecture of the Section 60(2) common-forum design, and the doctrinal arc through Dilip B. Jiwrajka.
On 11 August 2023, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court restored an arbitrator's award of 18% compound interest after the Allahabad High Court had reduced it to 9% simple interest under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. The ruling reaffirms that the Section 34 court has no power to modify; it may only set aside. Two years on, the 5-judge Constitution Bench in Gayatri Balasamy v. ISG Novasoft has qualified — not overruled — the proposition. A close reading of the holding, its lineage from Associate Builders through M. Hakeem, and the narrow modification corridor that Gayatri Balasamy has opened.
On 10 July 2013, a two-judge bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik and S.J. Mukhopadhaya struck down Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 — the provision that had given sitting MPs and MLAs three months from conviction to appeal before facing disqualification. The judgment held that Parliament had no constitutional competence to enact the exception: Articles 102(1)(e) and 191(1)(e) of the Constitution operate as immediate disqualifications on conviction. A digest of the holding, the constitutional reasoning, and the political-historical consequences.
On 24 March 2026 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Surya Kant CJ, Ujjal Bhuyan and N. Kotiswar Singh JJ — held that the denial of Permanent Commission to women Short Service Commission Officers across the Army, Navy and Air Force was the consequence of a structurally discriminatory evaluation framework, not of individual merit assessments. Invoking Article 142, the Court created a legal fiction of deemed completion of 20 years' qualifying service for SSCWOs released during the long litigation, preserved already-granted Permanent Commissions, and directed that serving SSCWOs meeting the 60% Selection Board cut-off be granted Permanent Commission subject to medical and disciplinary clearance. A digest of the holding, the structural-discrimination reasoning, and the Article 142 remedial architecture that closes the Babita Puniya / Annie Nagaraja / Nitisha line.
Across two engagements separated by four years, the Supreme Court has held the Tribunals Reforms architecture introduced by the Union to be inconsistent with the constitutional protection of judicial independence. In July 2021, a three-judge bench struck down provisions of the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance, 2021 by 2:1. In November 2025, a two-judge bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai held that the Tribunals Reform Act, 2021 was unconstitutional and inconsistent with the basic structure. A digest of both engagements, the doctrinal frame, and the tribunal-independence architecture they leave.
On 19 January 2021 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Rohinton Nariman, Navin Sinha and K.M. Joseph — upheld the constitutional validity of the IBC (Amendment) Act 2020 which inserted the second proviso to Section 7(1) requiring real-estate allottees to file jointly with a minimum of 100 allottees of the same project or 10 per cent of the total allottees (whichever is less). The bench held the threshold a reasonable Article 14 classification, treated the Article 19(1)(g) and Article 21 challenges as not made out (Article 21 expressly because alternative RERA and Consumer Protection Act remedies remained available), preserved the homebuyer-as-financial-creditor status validated in Pioneer Urban (2019), and exercised Article 142 to grant a 30-day window to pending applicants to align their pleadings with the new threshold. A close reading of Justice Nariman's judgment and what the threshold means for the present practitioner advising on a real-estate Section 7 application.
On 17 April 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — majority opinion authored by Rangnath Misra J. on behalf of himself and three other judges, with a separate concurring opinion by O. Chinnappa Reddy J. — unanimously held that excise duty paid directly by McDowell's buyers to the State to obtain distillery passes formed part of McDowell's turnover under the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act, 1957; the structural arrangement was a colourable device. The majority articulated that tax planning within the law is legitimate but colourable devices cannot be part of tax planning; Chinnappa Reddy J.'s concurrence went further, drawing on the UK Ramsay–Burmah Oil–Dawson line to urge a substance-over-form approach. A digest of the bench composition (as independently verifiable), the architecture of the Andhra excise scheme, the doctrinal contribution, and the post-McDowell arc through Azadi Bachao, Vodafone, and the statutory GAAR.
On 31 July 1980, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that Sections 4 and 55 of the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 — the provisions that had purported to give the Directive Principles overriding priority over the Fundamental Rights and to immunise Article 368 amendments from judicial review — were unconstitutional. The judgment is the operative authority on the harmony between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles, on the limits of Parliament's amending power, and on judicial review as part of the basic structure. A digest of the bench, the doctrine, and the constitutional arc.
On 10 July 2024, a two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih held that a divorced Muslim woman is entitled to claim maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (now Section 144 of the BNSS, 2023) against her husband, and that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 operates in addition to — not in derogation of — that secular maintenance right. The judgment is the most consequential restoration of the Shah Bano line in the post-1986 period.
On 19 May 2022, a three-judge bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath struck down the levy of IGST on ocean freight in CIF imports under the Reverse Charge Mechanism — holding that an Indian importer who has already paid IGST on the composite supply of CIF-imported goods cannot be separately charged IGST on the ocean-freight component of the same supply. The judgment is doctrinally significant for a connected reason: the Bench held that recommendations of the GST Council have persuasive value and are not binding on the Union or State Legislatures. A digest of the holdings, the doctrinal architecture, and the refund consequences.
On 5 May 2017, a three-judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan dismissed the appeals filed by the four adult convicts in the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder — known to public memory as the Nirbhaya case — and affirmed the death sentence imposed by the Trial Court and confirmed by the Delhi High Court. The judgment applied the rarest-of-rare doctrine articulated in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980) and held that the offence fell within its scope. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal application, and the architecture of capital sentencing it confirms.
On 23 December 2016 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in MySpace Inc v. Super Cassettes Industries Ltd, set aside Justice Manmohan Singh's blanket 2011 injunction and worked out the first coherent Indian framework for intermediary safe-harbour in copyright. The DB held that the proviso to Section 81 of the IT Act does not preclude an intermediary from invoking the Section 79 safe-harbour in copyright suits; that 'actual knowledge' under Section 51(a)(ii) of the Copyright Act requires knowledge of specific infringing material at a specific URL; that takedown notices must identify works with specificity, location and ownership; and that no general proactive monitoring obligation can be imposed.
On 26 April 2013, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court upheld SEBI's market-access debarment and ₹50 lakh adjudicating-officer penalty against a whole-time director of Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd. for fraudulent misstatement of financial results under Section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations. Directors closely associated with management, the Court held, cannot 'shut their eyes to what must be obvious to everyone' — red flags in revenues, profits, receivables and deposits engage an affirmative duty of inquiry, and passivity is not a defence. The judgment is the foundational SC authority on whole-time-director liability for company-level securities fraud; the proposition has often been read more broadly than the case decides.
On 2 July 2009, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court — A.P. Shah CJ and S. Muralidhar J — read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to exclude consensual sexual acts between adults in private. The judgment articulated, for the first time in Indian constitutional law, sexual orientation as an analogous ground under Article 15, deployed Article 21 to protect sexual autonomy in the personal sphere, recast Article 14 around effect-based discrimination, and drew the distinction between constitutional morality and popular morality. The Supreme Court overruled it in Suresh Kumar Koushal in December 2013; nearly five years later, the five-judge bench in Navtej Singh Johar vindicated the reasoning. A close reading of the 2009 doctrinal moment and the procedural arc that followed.
On 11 November 2021 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — U.U. Lalit, Ajay Rastogi and Aniruddha Bose, JJ., the judgment authored by Rastogi J. — answered five framed questions on the constitutional and statutory architecture of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016. The Bench held that the application of the Act to 'ongoing projects' — projects launched before but not completion-certificated by 1 May 2017 — is retroactive in operation and not retrospective, and is constitutionally permissible. The pre-deposit requirement under the proviso to Section 43(5) for promoter appeals was upheld; the Authority's single-member adjudicatory power to award refund-with-interest under Section 18 read with state Rules was upheld; and the refund-with-interest formula under the UP Rules — MCLR + 1% per annum — was read as part of the substantive architecture.
On 25 April 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench in N.N. Global Mercantile v. Indo Unique Flame held by 3:2 that an unstamped arbitration agreement could not be acted upon under Section 11 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. Eight months later, on 13 December 2023, a seven-judge Constitution Bench in In Re Interplay overruled it unanimously — restoring separability, kompetenz-kompetenz and the prima facie referral standard, and confining stamping to a curable Section 35 admissibility question for the tribunal. A close reading of the architecture, the 3:2 split, the seven-judge overruling, what was decided, what was left for the tribunal, and how the arc from SMS Tea Estates (2011) to Tarini Mohanty (2026) now reads end-to-end.
On 19 May 2022, a three-judge bench presided by Justice Uday Umesh Lalit — through a judgment authored by Justice S. Ravindra Bhat — held that the secondment of expatriate employees by overseas group entities of *Northern Operating Systems Pvt. Ltd.* constituted a taxable supply of manpower under the Finance Act 1994, attracting reverse-charge service tax. Substance, not the form of the secondment contract, was held to govern; the employment matrix — payroll, social security, the right of repatriation — remaining with the overseas entity was decisive. The Court denied the Revenue the extended period of limitation under *Section 73*. The judgment has since travelled into the GST era through a wave of *Section 74* notices and a moderating CBIC instruction.
On 1 April 2013 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed Novartis's decade-long campaign for an Indian patent on the beta-crystalline form of Imatinib Mesylate — sold abroad as Glivec (and as Gleevec in the United States). The Court read *Section 3(d)* of the *Patents Act 1970* as a heightened patentability filter for incremental pharmaceutical claims, glossed 'efficacy' as 'therapeutic efficacy', and held that improvements in bioavailability, hygroscopicity and flow are physico-chemical attributes that do not, without more, cross the s.3(d) threshold. The judgment supplied the doctrinal architecture for India's post-TRIPS anti-evergreening regime and remains the anchoring authority on incremental-pharma patentability.
On 10 July 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench held in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation that the right to life under Article 21 includes the right to livelihood — because no person can live without the means of living. The Bench was hearing a petition by pavement dwellers in Bombay challenging their eviction under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act, 1888. The petitioners ultimately did not succeed in vacating the eviction architecture, but the doctrinal contribution — that livelihood is part of Article 21 — has shaped four decades of socio-economic-rights jurisprudence.
On 12 August 2005 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in P.A. Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra, refined T.M.A. Pai (2002) on the four-fold typology of educational institutions and held that the State cannot impose reservation or admission quotas on private unaided professional institutions — minority or non-minority. Chief Justice Lahoti's unanimous judgment endorsed common entrance testing, retained the Islamic Academy regulatory-committee model for fees in an interim role, disapproved Islamic Academy's directions on State-percentage quotas in unaided institutions, and held that Article 29(2) does not override Article 30(1) in minority unaided institutions — vindicating the partial dissent of Quadri J and Ruma Pal J in T.M.A. Pai. The 93rd Constitutional Amendment Act 2005, inserting Article 15(5), was Parliament's direct legislative response.
On 20 April 2021, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court resolved a long-running circuit split and held that two Indian-incorporated parties may validly choose a foreign seat of arbitration. The resulting award is a foreign award enforceable under Part II of the 1996 Act, not a domestic award; and the Indian parties retain access to Section 9 interim relief through the proviso to Section 2(2). The judgment treats party autonomy as the dominant principle of Indian arbitration, even where the analytic invites attention to public-policy and contract-law objections.
On 26 November 2019 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Perkins Eastman Architects DPC v. HSCC (India) Ltd, extended TRF v. Energo from the narrow case of an ineligible MD nominating himself a substitute to the broader principle that a person who is himself statutorily ineligible by reason of interest in the dispute cannot — even where he does not appoint himself — be the unilateral appointing authority. The Court appointed an independent sole arbitrator under Section 11(6). A close reading of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit's judgment, the doctrinal architecture, and the recalibration by the Constitution Bench in Central Organisation for Railway Electrification (8 November 2024).
On 1 February 2021 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Phoenix ARC (P) Ltd v. Spade Financial Services Ltd, supplied the definitive Indian statement of the substantive content of financial debt — disbursement, consideration for the time value of money, and the commercial-effect-of-borrowing test — and held that collusive or sham transactions structured to mimic loans do not give rise to financial-creditor status. The judgment also extended the related-party exclusion in the first proviso to Section 21(2) to entities that were related to the corporate debtor at the time the debt was incurred but had since formally divested, rejecting a mechanical 'praesenti' reading. A close reading of Justice Chandrachud's judgment, the doctrinal architecture, and the post-Phoenix practice.
On 9 August 2019 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Pioneer Urban Land and Infrastructure Ltd v. Union of India, upheld the 2018 Amendment to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code that deemed homebuyer advances 'commercial effect of borrowing' and thereby financial debt under Section 5(8)(f), held that IBC and RERA operate in different fields and co-exist harmoniously with Section 238 IBC controlling on conflict, and drew the doctrinal line between genuine allottees with possession intent and speculative investors seeking only refund or profit. A close reading of Justice Nariman's judgment, the constitutional analysis on Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 300A, the field-occupation reasoning and what practitioners advising developers and homebuyers should take from the case.
Read through the coordination lens rather than the constitutional-validity lens, Pioneer Urban v. Union of India is the case that built the structural relationship between RERA and the IBC. The three-judge bench held that the two statutes occupy different fields, that Section 88 RERA preserves remedies under other laws additively, that the Section 238 IBC non-obstante clause is engaged only on an actual operational conflict, and that the same homebuyer can simultaneously stand as RERA allottee, CPA consumer and IBC financial creditor. The genuine-allottee/speculative-investor distinction is the IBC's internal abuse-prevention valve, examined at the Section 7 admission stage and reinforced by the Section 65 discipline. This editorial draws the textual map, the field-occupation analysis and the downstream architecture leading to Manish Kumar (2021) and the project-wise CIRP codified by the IBC (Amendment) Act 2026.
On 5 November 2024, a nine-judge Constitution Bench held by 7:2 that not every private property qualifies as a 'material resource of the community' under Article 39(b) of the Constitution — and overruled Sanjeev Coke Manufacturing Co. v. Bharat Coking Coal (1983), which had adopted Justice Krishna Iyer's expansive minority position in Ranganatha Reddy as the rule. The judgment recalibrates the relationship between private property and the State's redistributive power, and sets out a multi-factor inquiry for what falls within Article 39(b)'s reach.
On 30 July 1992 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka read the right to education out of Article 21 read with the Directive Principles in Articles 38, 39, 41 and 45 and struck down capitation fees in professional colleges. Seven months later, on 4 February 1993, a five-judge Constitution Bench in Unni Krishnan v. State of A.P. refined and re-stated the right — bifurcating its content so that free and compulsory education up to the age of fourteen became enforceable as a fundamental right (later codified as Article 21A by the 86th Amendment) while education beyond that age remained subject to the State's economic capacity. The Bench also imposed the free-seats / payment-seats scheme on private unaided professional institutions and capped capitation fees as unconstitutional. The combined two-step articulation set the doctrinal frame from which the 86th Amendment (2002), the RTE Act 2009, Society for Unaided Private Schools (2012) and Pramati (2014) all proceeded.
On 27 November 2015 a two-judge Division Bench of the Delhi High Court (Pradeep Nandrajog, J. and Mukta Gupta, J.) delivered the long-awaited decision on Roche's IN 196774 — the Indian patent on Erlotinib Hydrochloride, sold as Tarceva — and Cipla's accused generic Erlocip. The Bench held the suit patent valid, held Cipla's Polymorph B product within the scope of the compound patent (the failure of Roche's downstream Polymorph B claim under *Section 3(d)* did not narrow the parent compound patent), declined a permanent injunction because the patent was within months of expiry, and — most consequentially — held that *Section 3(d)* of the *Patents Act 1970* is a patent-eligibility provision operating at the grant stage and is not available as a defence at the infringement stage. The decision imposed ₹5 lakh in costs on Cipla and remanded for an accounts inquiry. The Special Leave Petition was admitted in 2016 and withdrawn under settlement in June 2017; the Delhi Bench's framework remains good law.
On 10 February 1970, an eleven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court struck down the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1969 by a ten-to-one majority. Justice J.C. Shah's majority judgment did three doctrinally distinct things: it read Article 31(2) compensation as a 'just equivalent', it replaced the object/subject test with an effect test, and it overruled A.K. Gopalan's silo theory of fundamental rights — the analytical move that, eight years later, made the golden triangle of Maneka Gandhi possible.
On 3 October 2024, a two-judge bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Sanjay Karol held that the textual choice of 'plant or machinery' — rather than 'plant and machinery' — in *Section 17(5)(d) of the CGST Act, 2017* was deliberate, and that a building could qualify as 'plant' for input-tax-credit purposes if the functionality test was satisfied. The Finance Act 2025 substituted 'and' for 'or' with retrospective effect from 1 July 2017, nullifying the reading; the review petition was dismissed on 20 May 2025; constitutional challenges to the retrospective amendment are now mounting in the High Courts. A digest of the holding, the legislative reversal, and the live constitutional terrain.
On 31 August 2012, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court delivered the most consequential ruling on the SEBI–MCA jurisdictional boundary the regulatory architecture had seen. Two Sahara group companies had raised approximately ₹24,029.73 crore from around three crore investors through optionally fully convertible debentures, calling the issue a private placement. The Court held the issues were deemed public offers under the first proviso to Section 67(3) of the Companies Act, 1956, brought them squarely within SEBI's jurisdiction, and directed refund of approximately ₹17,400 crore with 15 per cent interest into a SEBI-administered account. The judgment reset the listing-trigger architecture, foreshadowed the Companies Act, 2013 private-placement framework, and produced one of the longest-running enforcement sagas in Indian regulatory history.
On 6 May 2004, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India — Ruma Pal, J. and P. Venkatarama Reddi, J. — held that a domain name is more than a mere internet address; it functions as a business identifier capable of trade-mark protection under the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the common-law tort of passing off. The Court reversed the Karnataka High Court Division Bench and restored the City Civil Judge Bangalore's interim injunction against Siffynet Solutions in favour of Satyam Infoway. A close reading of the territoriality of cyberspace question, the classical trinity test applied to coined word marks, the dicta on the UDRP and ICANN architecture and the foundational role of the judgment in the .in INDRP framework.
On 16 October 2015, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that the Constitution (Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014 and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 were unconstitutional — and restored the collegium system for the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the High Courts. The majority held that judicial primacy in the appointment process is part of the independence of the judiciary, which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. Justice Chelameswar dissented entirely. A digest of the bench, the doctrinal architecture, and the Memorandum of Procedure question that remains.
On 18 May 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih clarified that Section 6(5) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 — which protects pre-2004 partitions from the retroactive coparcenary amendment of 2005 — does not create a jurisdictional bar to a partition suit and does not extinguish the independent statutory succession rights of Class I heirs under Section 8. The judgment reinforces the doctrinal architecture that Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020) had established and clarifies the relationship between the coparcenary line and the intestate succession line under the Hindu Succession Act.
On 17 March 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Prasanna B. Varale held that amounts received by the dependants of the deceased under employer-provided group insurance — or under other contractual or social-security benefits — cannot be treated as 'pecuniary advantages' liable to be deducted from compensation awarded under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. The judgment affirms the prior doctrinal line that advantages accruing from contracts performed during the deceased's lifetime are not outcomes of the death itself, and produces a working frame for the just-compensation architecture in motor-accident claims.
On 26 May 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and Vijay Bishnoi modified a life sentence to the period already undergone by the appellant — a man who had spent over twenty-three years in custody without remission. The judgment reaffirms the settled position that the imposition of a life sentence does not bar modification to a fixed-term sentence where the convict has already undergone more than 14 years of imprisonment, and reads against the architecture of remission and pre-mature release under the criminal-justice system.
On 28 August 2024, the Supreme Court granted bail to Prem Prakash — an associate of the then-Chief Minister of Jharkhand — in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 matter, after he had spent over a year in custody. The judgment reaffirmed the constitutional principle that 'bail is the rule, jail is the exception' in PMLA cases, held statements made by an accused while in PMLA custody to be inadmissible against him under Section 50 PMLA, and continued the post-Vijay Madanlal arc in which the Court has moderated the operation of the twin bail conditions where prolonged incarceration meets the proportionality test of liberty. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal frame, and where the PMLA bail line stands now.
On 27 January 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S.V.N. Bhatti held that disputes relating to the employment, termination, or alleged sham nature of contract labour arrangements must be adjudicated by a Labour Court or Industrial Tribunal under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 — and that the State's reference jurisdiction operates even on an apprehended dispute and is not foreclosed by the absence of a prior written demand on the employer. The judgment reaffirms the SAIL safeguards for contract labour and supplies a working architecture for contract-labour litigation.
On 17 March 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court (J.B. Pardiwala and K.V. Viswanathan JJ., judgment authored by Viswanathan J.) held that the use-of-proceeds objects disclosed by an issuer for a preferential issue are market-facing regulatory commitments under the SEBI (ICDR) Regulations 2009, and that post-allotment diversion of those proceeds constitutes fraud under the PFUTP Regulations 2003 — not curable by a subsequent shareholder ratification resolution or by an alteration of the Memorandum of Association. The Court separately confirmed that proceedings under sections 11 and 11B of the SEBI Act 1992 by the Whole-Time Member and adjudication under section 15HA by the Adjudicating Officer occupy distinct preventive and punitive spheres, and may be pursued in parallel.
On 22 August 2017, a Constitution Bench of five judges drawn from five faiths held by 3:2 that talaq-e-biddat — the practice of instant, irrevocable triple talaq — was unconstitutional. Justice Nariman and Justice Lalit struck it down as manifestly arbitrary under Article 14. Justice Kurian Joseph struck it down on Islamic theological grounds. Chief Justice Khehar and Justice Nazeer would have left the practice to legislative reform. A digest of the bench, the three operative positions, the doctrine on manifest arbitrariness, and the subsequent Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019.
On 11 March 1994, a nine-judge Constitution Bench delivered the most consequential federalism ruling of the post-Kesavananda generation. The judgment held that the President's proclamation under Article 356 imposing President's Rule in a State is subject to judicial review; that secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution; that the dissolution of a State Legislative Assembly cannot precede Parliament's approval of the proclamation; and that a State Government that fails to act in accordance with the secular character of the Constitution can, on appropriate facts, be dismissed. A digest of the bench, the doctrinal holdings, and the architecture they leave.
On 1 August 2024, a seven-judge Constitution Bench held by 6:1 that sub-classification within Scheduled Castes for reservation purposes is constitutionally permissible — and overruled E.V. Chinnaiah v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2004), which had held that the Scheduled Castes constituted a homogeneous class. The judgment recalibrates the Indra Sawhney – M. Nagaraj – Jarnail Singh line on reservation and opens the door to sub-quotas within SC reservation for the most disadvantaged sub-groups, subject to empirical data and constitutional safeguards. A digest of the bench, the opinions, the overruling of E.V. Chinnaiah, and what States can now do.
On 17 February 2010, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — Balakrishnan CJ, Raveendran, D.K. Jain (authoring for the unanimous Bench), Sathasivam and Panchal JJ — held that the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts under Article 226 and of the Supreme Court under Article 32 is plenary and constitutional, and that a High Court may direct the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate a cognisable offence within a State even without the State's consent under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946. Judicial review is part of the basic structure; the constitutional power cannot be fettered by ordinary legislation. But the power is to be exercised sparingly and in exceptional cases, to preserve federal balance. A close reading of the judgment, the underlying Garbeta incident, and the federalism architecture the Bench was working through.
On 6 September 2022 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in State Tax Officer (1) v. Rainbow Papers Ltd, read Section 48 of the Gujarat Value Added Tax Act 2003 — which creates a first charge on the dealer's property in respect of VAT dues — as creating a 'security interest' by operation of law within Section 3(31) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, with the consequence that the State became a 'secured creditor' under Section 3(30) and a resolution plan that wholly ignored the statutory dues was non-compliant with Section 30(2). A coordinate bench in Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam v. Raman Ispat then confined the holding to its facts. A close reading of the GVAT-IBC architecture, the Section 53 waterfall analysis, the doctrinal arc that has followed, and what practitioners advising resolution applicants and statutory authorities should take from the case.
On 26 August 2022 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Sundaresh Bhatt, Liquidator of ABG Shipyard v. Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, held that once a moratorium is imposed under Section 14 or Section 33(5) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, the Customs Act yields to the IBC by force of Section 238. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs retains the power to assess and determine the quantum of customs duty payable, but cannot initiate recovery, sale or confiscation of the corporate debtor's goods during the moratorium; the customs claim must be filed before the IRP or liquidator and ranks in the Section 53 waterfall. A close reading of Chief Justice Ramana's judgment, the spheres-of-operation reasoning and the doctrinal arc through Paschimanchal.
On 25 January 2019 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court upheld the *Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016* in its entirety against a battery of Article 14, Article 19(1)(g) and Article 300A challenges. The judgment installed an intelligible-differentia rationale for the financial-creditor / operational-creditor distinction, read down *Section 29A* to confine its sweep to specified categories of ineligible resolution applicants, and directed practical fixes to the *NCLT / NCLAT* tribunal architecture including circuit benches. The 'defaulter's paradise is lost' framing has organised the post-2019 narrative on the Code's transformative purpose.
On 26 March 2021, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court set aside the NCLAT's reinstatement of Cyrus Mistry as Executive Chairman of Tata Sons and read down its order recasting Article 75 of the Tata Sons Articles of Association. The judgment delivers two doctrinal resets: a removal from the Board — even of a director nominated by a significant minority shareholder — does not by itself amount to oppression under Sections 241 and 242 of the Companies Act, 2013; and Articles of Association are not per se invalid merely because they confer powers that could potentially be exercised oppressively. The challenge, the Court held, must be to the exercise of the power, not to its existence.
On 15 January 2026, a two-judge bench — Justice R. Mahadevan in the principal opinion, with Justice J.B. Pardiwala concurring — held that the General Anti-Avoidance Rule in Chapter X-A of the *Income-tax Act, 1961* applies to any arrangement yielding a tax benefit on or after 1 April 2017, even for pre-2017 investments structured to claim Mauritius treaty benefits. The Tax Residency Certificate, the Court held, remains a relevant factor but is no longer conclusive for GAAR purposes; the *Azadi Bachao Andolan* line on TRC-as-conclusive-evidence is substantially modified. A digest of the holding, the 2016 Protocol grandfathering architecture, and the practitioner fallout that has emerged through May-June 2026.
On 31 October 2002 an eleven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in T.M.A. Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka, comprehensively re-stated the law on educational institutions in India — recognising the right to establish and administer an institution as an occupation under Article 19(1)(g), settling the State-wise determination of minority status, drawing the four-fold aided/unaided × minority/non-minority typology that still governs the field, overruling the free-seats/payment-seats scheme of Unni Krishnan as applied to private unaided institutions, and reading down the rigid 50% cap of St. Stephen's College on minority preference. A close reading of Chief Justice Kirpal's majority, the five separate opinions, the partial dissents of Quadri J and Ruma Pal J on the Article 29(2)/30(1) interaction, and the doctrinal arc through Islamic Academy, Inamdar, the 93rd Amendment and the RTE Act.
On 14 December 2017 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha v. M/S Prius Auto Industries Ltd, affirmed the Delhi High Court Division Bench's reversal of an ad-interim injunction in favour of Toyota and dismissed Toyota's appeal. The judgment, authored by Justice Ranjan Gogoi for himself and Justice Navin Sinha, holds that trans-border reputation under Indian passing-off law is governed by the territoriality principle — a foreign mark must demonstrate substantial spillover goodwill in Indian territory at the relevant date, here April 2001, and the classical trinity of goodwill, misrepresentation and damage applies even where the mark is globally famous. The judgment reads down Whirlpool (1996) and Milmet Oftho (2004) without overruling them and aligns Indian law with the English Starbucks (HK) approach. A close reading of the judgment's procedural posture, the territoriality holding, and what practitioners should plead in trans-border reputation suits.
On 3 July 2017 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in TRF Ltd v. Energo Engineering Projects Ltd, held that where an arbitration clause authorises the Managing Director of a party to act as sole arbitrator or to nominate one, and that MD is statutorily ineligible under Section 12(5) read with the Seventh Schedule of the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996, the MD cannot act as arbitrator and equally cannot nominate a substitute — 'once the infrastructure collapses, the superstructure is bound to collapse.' A close reading of Justice Dipak Misra's judgment, the doctrinal architecture, the 2015 Amendment background and what the holding seeded for Perkins Eastman and Central Organisation for Railway Electrification.
On 16 May 2025, a Supreme Court bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan struck down the 2017 Notification and the 2021 Office Memorandum that had enabled ex post facto environmental clearances, holding that retrospective approval was foreign to the architecture of Indian environmental regulation. On 18 November 2025, a different bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai — sitting with Justice K. Vinod Chandran and Justice Bhuyan — recalled that judgment by 2:1, with Bhuyan J. now in dissent. A digest of both judgments, the doctrinal disagreement, and what the environmental-clearance architecture now looks like.
On 12 July 2022 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Vidarbha Industries Power Ltd v. Axis Bank Ltd, read the word 'may' in Section 7(5)(a) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code as conferring discretion on the adjudicating authority to refuse admission of an otherwise-eligible Section 7 application — an apparent dilution of the Innoventive 'mandatory-admission-on-proof-of-debt-and-default' rule. The reception was sharp; the review was dismissed; a coordinate bench in Maganlal Daga flagged the inconsistency; and a coordinate bench in M. Suresh Kumar Reddy v. Canara Bank confined Vidarbha to its facts. A close reading of the textual contrast between Sections 7(5)(a) and 9(5)(a), the APTEL-award factual matrix, and the doctrinal arc that has, in operational terms, restored Innoventive to its place.
On 14 December 2020 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corporation, restated and tightened the in rem / in personam taxonomy of Booz Allen into a structured four-fold test for non-arbitrability, held tenancy disputes under the Transfer of Property Act arbitrable, overruled N. Radhakrishnan on the arbitrability of fraud, and recalibrated the standard of judicial review under Sections 8 and 11 in favour of competence-competence. A close reading of Justice Sanjiv Khanna's lead judgment, Justice Ramana's concurring opinion, the doctrinal architecture and what the bar should plead in the post-Vidya Drolia world.
On 27 July 2022, a three-judge bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar upheld substantially all the contested provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 — the arrest power under Section 19, the provisional attachment power under Section 5, the search-and-seizure architecture under Section 17, the reverse-burden provision under Section 24, and the twin bail conditions under Section 45. The judgment also held that an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) is not equivalent to an FIR and need not be supplied to the accused. A digest of the holdings, the doctrinal contributions, and the review now pending.
On 18 December 1997 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice J.S. Verma, hearing the Jain hawala public interest litigation, issued a set of structural directions to insulate the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate from executive interference. The judgment fixed a two-year tenure for the CBI Director, gave the Central Vigilance Commission statutory status, struck down the 'Single Directive', and operationalised continuing mandamus as a tool of monitored investigation. It is the foundational case in modern Indian PIL practice.
On 20 January 2012, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — S.H. Kapadia C.J., K.S. Radhakrishnan J. and Swatanter Kumar J. — unanimously held that the transfer of a single share in a Cayman Islands holding company (CGP) between two non-residents did not give rise to capital gains taxable in India under Section 9(1)(i) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, even though the share's value was rooted in the Hutch–Vodafone Indian telecom chain; the look-at test was adopted, and the Revenue's USD 2.2 billion demand was quashed. Parliament responded with the Finance Act 2012 retrospective amendment to Section 9(1)(i); Vodafone then commenced a treaty arbitration under the India–Netherlands BIT and prevailed; the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Act 2021 ultimately rolled back the retrospective amendment. A digest of the judgment, its statutory architecture, and the doctrinal arc that has followed.
Across a tightly-packed cluster of orders in early 2026 — Swami Ramdev in February, Shashi Tharoor and Sunil Gavaskar in May, and most recently Naga Chaitanya on 29 May — the Delhi High Court has developed a consistent doctrinal architecture for protecting personality rights against AI-generated deepfakes. A digest of the lead Naga Chaitanya order before Justice Jyoti Singh, the dynamic-injunction device that runs through the cluster, the doctrinal continuity with the earlier Varun Dhawan disposition, and the limiting principles the Court has begun to articulate.
On 15 January 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan held in Elegna Co-operative Housing Society v. Edelweiss ARC that once a financial debt and default are established, admission under Section 7 of the IBC is mandatory — viability, prejudice to homebuyers, and creditor motive are wholly extraneous. A digest of the disposition, the doctrinal lineage from Innoventive through Vidarbha to M. Suresh Kumar Reddy, and what the homebuyer locus question looks like after Elegna and the companion Mansi Brar Fernandes line.
On 21 November 2025, the Supreme Court stayed proceedings in GR Infra Projects Ltd. v. State of Madhya Pradesh, prima facie holding that a show-cause notice under Section 74 of the CGST Act that sets out only figures, without a factual narration of fraud, wilful misstatement or suppression, is legally deficient. The order has shaped the High Court line on Section 74 and, by extension, on Section 74A — which now governs the extended-limitation regime from 1 April 2024 — and reaffirms the jurisdictional-fact doctrine for the extended-limitation framework.
On 2 April 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe held in Rajiv Gaddh v. Subodh Parkash that a subsequent application under Section 11(6) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 — based on the same cause of action as one already abandoned — is barred on the principles contained in Order 23 Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. A digest of the ruling, the facts that drove it, the doctrinal extension into the appointment stage, and what it tells practitioners about strategy and abandonment.
On 11 March 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi held in M. Thanigivelu v. Tamil Nadu Electricity Board that training is part of the service for the purposes of seniority — and that an administrative Board Proceeding cannot retrospectively re-date the seniority of direct recruits to align them with promotees. The judgment restates a longstanding service-jurisprudence principle in the language of the TNEB Service Regulations and clarifies the limits on the State employer's discretion to reorder service hierarchies through administrative instruments.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalSecurities and Exchange Board of India / Securities Appellate Tribunal
On 28 April 2026, SEBI passed a final order in the long-running Winsome Yarns GDR matter against Arun Panchariya, recomputing the penalty from approximately ₹67 crore to ₹20 lakh after the Securities Appellate Tribunal had repeatedly directed reassessment on proportionality grounds. The order is a worked example of how SAT's proportionality jurisprudence — the requirement that penalty quantum reflect comparable precedents, the role of mitigation evidence, and the limits on penalty when gains are not conclusively established — operates in the GDR-fraud space.
The Supreme Court's 2014 ruling that arrest in offences carrying up to seven years is not a clerical reflex — and the checklist its bench wrote into the working life of every station-house officer. A close digest, with the directions verbatim and a reading on how they travel onto BNSS s. 35.
After nineteen years and three rounds of regulatory and tribunal scrutiny, the Supreme Court has set aside SEBI's fraud finding against Reliance Industries on the 2007 RPL trades — and ordered SEBI to refund the ₹250 crore the company had already deposited. A close reading of the disposal, what survives, and why the case will be cited for years on the question of disgorgement standards.
On 29 May 2026, a Bench led by the Chief Justice issued the most prescriptive set of timeline directions ever placed on the High Courts in relation to pronouncing reserved judgments. A close reading of the directions, the escalation mechanism, and what they mean for the litigant on the other side of a reserved order.
Justice Jyoti Singh of the Delhi High Court has indicated that the court will pass an interim order protecting Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan's personality rights against unauthorised exploitation — including AI-generated deepfakes, morphed images, pornographic content, and unauthorised merchandise. The disposition is part of a developing 2026 line of Delhi High Court personality-rights jurisprudence covering Hrithik Roshan, Ajay Devgn and others. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the AI dimension, and what the framework now looks like.
The 1996 ruling that converted custodial protection from constitutional aspiration into station-house procedure — and the eleven directions that still govern every arrest in India, now carried over into Section 35 BNSS and beyond. A practitioner's digest.
The 28 May 2026 judgment upholding the 28% GST levy on online money gaming, fantasy sports and casinos is the largest indirect-tax ruling in India in a generation — and the reasoning is more interesting than the outcome. A digest of the actionable-claims doctrine, the rejection of the skill-versus-chance test, and what survives for the practitioner advising in this space.
Bhagwati J.'s 1979 directions ordered the release of thousands of undertrials who had been in custody longer than the sentence the offence carried — and, in doing so, read speedy trial into Article 21. A close digest of the reasoning, with a reading on how it now constrains pre-trial detention under the BNSS.
On 26 May 2026, the Supreme Court held that a party who participates in arbitral proceedings after the arbitrator's mandate has expired — without objection — cannot later challenge the award on the ground of expired mandate. A close reading of the doctrine, its interaction with the Court's earlier 2026 rulings on Section 29A, and what it means for the practitioner advising on tribunal continuity.
How a passport-impoundment order led a seven-judge Bench to overrule Gopalan, fuse Articles 14, 19 and 21 into the golden triangle, and import substantive fairness into Indian constitutional law — the most consequential constitutional ruling of the post-Emergency era.
A short judgment with a long reach. When the appellate court reverses an acquittal and finds the accused guilty for the first time, Section 386(a) CrPC requires it to itself hear the convict on sentence — not remit the matter to the trial court. A reading of the doctrinal point, the section it turns on, and how the rule travels onto BNSS Section 427.
A five-judge Bench in 1962 upheld Section 124A IPC, but only by reading into it the limitation that has governed sedition prosecutions ever since. Six decades on, with the offence re-housed as Section 152 BNS, the Kedar Nath gloss remains the doctrinal floor — and the live question is whether the rewrite preserves or alters it.
A three-judge Bench in 2014 overruled the looser reading of Section 65B that had governed electronic-evidence admissibility for nine years, and held that a certificate under sub-section (4) is a condition precedent. The reasoning, the overruling of *Navjot Sandhu*, and the question of how the doctrine now travels onto Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.
Six years after Anvar P.V., the three-judge Bench of Nariman, Bhat and Ramasubramanian JJ. returned to Section 65B — to settle a doctrinal drift that had crept in through *Shafhi Mohammad* and to clarify the certificate framework at the boundaries. A digest of the holding, the relaxation that wasn't, and how the framework now travels onto Section 63 BSA.
On 24 August 2017, a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held — without dissent, in 547 pages across six opinions — that the right to privacy is protected as a fundamental right under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The judgment overruled M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) in significant part, and supplied the three-prong proportionality test for state action affecting privacy. A close digest.
In the absence of a domestic statute on workplace sexual harassment, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Verma framed guidelines drawn from India's international obligations and made them binding by direction. The guidelines governed for sixteen years until the 2013 POSH Act codified them. A digest of the doctrinal move, the guidelines themselves, and the relationship between the judgment and the statute it inspired.
A five-judge Constitution Bench in 1980 upheld the constitutional validity of the death penalty by a 4:1 majority, with Bhagwati J. delivering a powerful dissent two years later. The Sarkaria J. majority opinion gave the bar the 'rarest of rare' doctrine, the special-reasons requirement under Section 354(3) CrPC, and the doctrinal architecture of the pre-sentence hearing under Section 235(2) — the framework that anchors every contemporary sentencing appeal.
Valkya Editorial··10 min
TribunalNational Company Law Appellate Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi
On 4 May 2026, the NCLAT Principal Bench set aside an NCLT order from December 2025 that had admitted Embassy Developments Limited into CIRP — and closed the insolvency proceedings in their entirety. A digest of the disposal, the institutional posture it signals, and what it means for promoters fighting Section 7 / Section 9 admission at the threshold.
On 5 May 2010, a three-judge Bench held that the involuntary administration of narco-analysis, polygraph and Brain Electrical Activation Profile tests violates the right against self-incrimination under Article 20(3) and the right to personal liberty under Article 21. The judgment extended the Article 20(3) protection from spoken or written testimony to involuntary extraction of personal knowledge from the mind. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the consent framework, and how it now travels onto BSA s. 51.
On 6 September 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in so far as it criminalised consensual sexual conduct between adults. The judgment overruled Suresh Kumar Koushal (2013), deployed the Puttaswamy privacy framework, and supplied four substantial concurring opinions on dignity, equality and constitutional morality. A digest of the holding, the reasoning, and the doctrinal lineage.
On 27 September 2018 — three weeks after Navtej Singh Johar — a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down Section 497 IPC, the colonial-era adultery provision that had treated the wife as the husband's property and the consenting adulterer as a thief of marital chastity. Four concurring opinions deployed the dignity and equality framework to dismantle a provision that had survived more than a century and a half of constitutional silence. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the relationship with the BNS framework.
On 15 April 2014, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court recognised transgender persons as the 'third gender,' upheld the right of all persons to self-identify their gender on the basis of psychological identity rather than biological assignment, and held that transgender persons are entitled to fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, 16, 19(1)(a) and 21. A digest of the holding, the directions, the Sex Reassignment Surgery question, and the doctrinal architecture that *Puttaswamy* and *Navtej Singh Johar* would subsequently build on.
On 9 March 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that the right to die with dignity is part of the right to life under Article 21, legalised passive euthanasia, and recognised the Advance Medical Directive (the 'living will') as the procedural mechanism through which an individual's end-of-life preferences could be honoured. The judgment is the foundational architecture of end-of-life law in India. A digest of the holding, the procedural framework, and the 2023 simplification that followed.
On 28 August 1996, a three-judge Bench led by Justice Kuldip Singh held that 'sustainable development', the 'precautionary principle' and the 'polluter pays' principle are part of the law of the land — and ordered the discharge of pollution fees by tanneries in Tamil Nadu that had contaminated the River Palar and rendered 35,000 hectares of agricultural land unfit for cultivation. The judgment, together with *M.C. Mehta (Oleum Gas Leak)*, supplies the foundational architecture of Indian environmental law. A digest of the doctrines, the directions, and what they require.
Less than a year after the Bhopal disaster, an oleum gas leak from a Shriram unit in Delhi prompted the Supreme Court — through a Constitution Bench led by Bhagwati CJ — to depart from the English strict-liability framework of Rylands v. Fletcher and to formulate a doctrine of absolute liability for enterprises engaged in hazardous activities. The judgment is the doctrinal foundation of Indian environmental and industrial liability law. A digest of the rule, why the Court declined to apply Rylands, and how the doctrine continues to operate four decades on.
On 16 November 1992, a nine-judge Constitution Bench upheld the implementation of the Mandal Commission's recommendation for 27% reservation in Central Government services for Other Backward Classes — but bounded the framework with two structural constraints: reservations could not, in the aggregate, exceed 50% of available positions, and the 'creamy layer' of the backward class had to be excluded from the benefit. Three decades on, the framework remains the constitutional architecture of Indian reservations policy. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and how it continues to govern.
Seven years before *Common Cause* would articulate the comprehensive constitutional framework, *Aruna Shanbaug* recognised passive euthanasia in Indian law for the first time. The 2011 disposition — addressing a petition seeking withdrawal of life support for a nurse who had been in a persistent vegetative state for nearly four decades following a brutal sexual assault — supplied the doctrinal architecture that *Common Cause* would later complete. A digest of the case, the holding, and the relationship between the two judgments.
On 13 May 2016, a two-judge Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra upheld the constitutional validity of Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code — the criminal-defamation framework — against challenges based on the freedom of speech and expression. The reasoning rested on the proposition that reputation is constitutionally protected under Article 21, and that the criminal-defamation framework, properly construed, does not produce an undue chilling effect on expression. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the contemporary practitioner's framework.
On 19 October 2006, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the constitutional validity of the 77th, 81st, 82nd and 85th Amendments — which together had inserted Articles 16(4A) and 16(4B) to provide for reservation in promotion for SC/ST and the carry-forward of unfilled reserved positions. The disposition articulated the three-pronged test that has governed promotion-reservation policy ever since: backwardness, inadequacy of representation, and administrative efficiency. A digest of the holding, the three-prong architecture, and the relationship with the *Indra Sawhney* and *Jarnail Singh* lines.
On 23 April 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud held that Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — the secular maintenance framework — applies to Muslim women, and that the right to maintenance does not end with the iddat period where the divorced wife is unable to support herself. The judgment's substantive disposition was reversed by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986; the constitutional architecture it articulated, however, has continued to govern subsequent engagement with the question. A digest of the holding, the reasoning, and the doctrinal trajectory.
On 6 March 2020, a five-judge Constitution Bench overruled *Pune Municipal Corporation v. Harakchand Misirimal Solanki* (2014) and substantially restructured the doctrinal architecture under Section 24(2) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The substantive reading: 'or' between possession and compensation in Section 24(2) is to be read as 'nor' — the deemed lapse of acquisition proceedings requires that both conditions be unmet, not just one. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the substantive implications for land-acquisition practice.
On 17 October 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously declined to recognise a fundamental right to marry for queer persons under the constitutional framework, and declined to read down the Special Marriage Act, 1954 to extend its substantive marriage architecture to same-sex couples. A 3:2 split on the civil-union question — Chief Justice Chandrachud and Justice Kaul supporting a civil-union framework; the majority declining — produced the disposition's most substantively contested doctrinal dimension. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the relationship with the *NALSA* and *Navtej* lines.
On 8 March 2018, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court — Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud — set aside the Kerala High Court's annulment of Hadiya's marriage and reaffirmed the constitutional protection of an adult's right to choose her faith and her life partner. The substantive disposition engaged the constitutional architecture of autonomy, identity, and personal liberty, and articulated doctrinal contributions that have anchored subsequent engagement with the right to choose. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the broader trajectory.
Valkya Editorial··9 min
TribunalNational Company Law Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi
A clean NCLAT ruling on a question that had been quietly bedeviling resolution professionals across the country: can the EPFO continue assessment proceedings during a moratorium under Section 14 of the IBC? The Tribunal has held that it cannot — and that an assessment order passed during CIRP is, accordingly, unenforceable against the corporate debtor.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalNational Company Law Appellate Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi
After a judicial member of the NCLAT Chennai bench recused himself in August 2025 — disclosing an attempt to influence the order through a former High Court judge — the matter went to the Principal Bench under the Supreme Court's directions. On 23 March 2026, the Principal Bench under Chairperson Ashok Bhushan, J. set aside the insolvency proceedings and imposed ₹10 lakh costs on the operational creditor. A short but consequential disposition.
A Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court — Justice D.K. Singh and Justice T.M. Nadaf — has held that the Chief Minister's Office should not directly entertain or interfere in transfer and posting decisions for government and public-undertaking employees. The substantive direction: no transfer request for Group B or C employees should be entertained by the CMO; the matter should end at the department level. The doctrinal architecture engages the separation-of-functions principle that has been developing in Indian administrative law, the constitutional protection of merit and integrity in public administration, and the practical concern that political-office interference in routine personnel decisions distorts both administration and democratic accountability.
On 17 March 2026, the Competition Commission of India closed a complaint against Roppen Transportation (Rapido) over alleged use of private (white-plate) vehicles in its bike-taxi service. The Commission's reasoning was jurisdictional: the dispute fell within the specialised framework of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and not within the Commission's competition-law jurisdiction. A digest of the order, the jurisdictional doctrine, and what it reveals about the Commission's posture on overlap with sectoral regulation.
Two airlines control nearly 90% of the Indian domestic aviation market. A complainant alleged that their identical cancellation-charge structures were anti-competitive — collusion under Section 3, abuse of dominance under Section 4, or both. The Competition Commission of India closed the matter under Section 26(2) on the ground that no prima facie case had been made out. A digest of the reasoning, the threshold standard, and what the disposition reveals about the CCI's contemporary posture in consumer-pricing complaints.
The withdrawal mechanism under Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code was Parliament's compromise between commercial pragmatism and statutory discipline — a structured route for settlement during CIRP. The NCLAT has, in a line of 2026 decisions including Gokul Aggarwal v. Bank of India, held that the route closes when liquidation commences. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the line of cases, and what it means for the settlement-exit practice that had grown up around the section.
On 10 March 2026, a learned single judge of the Bombay High Court closed a gap that had quietly opened up in Indian arbitration practice: whether a foreign award-creditor who has filed an enforcement petition under Part II loses access to interim relief under Section 9. The judgment is short, the holding is precise, and the practitioner's takeaway is operational.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalNational Company Law Appellate Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi
The NCLAT has held that the demand notice in Form B prescribed under the 2019 Rules cannot, by itself, constitute invocation of a personal guarantee. A Section 95 IBC application against a personal guarantor without prior contractual invocation is not maintainable. The NCLAT went further: it directed that the conduct of UCO Bank officials in filing the application without invocation be brought to the attention of the bank's Chairman. A digest of the doctrinal point, the procedural architecture, and what it means for personal-guarantor practice.
The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has held that the investigating officer's discretion to sponsor a witness for recording of statement under Section 183 BNSS — the successor to Section 164 CrPC — is not displaced by a party's request. The investigating agency cannot be compelled to record the statement of a particular witness. A digest of the section, the holding, and what it means for the criminal-investigation framework under the BNSS.
A Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court has reaffirmed that a conviction recorded against a juvenile under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act cannot operate as a disqualification for appointment to government or public services. The reasoning engages the rehabilitation-and-reintegration principle that anchors the entire JJ Act framework, and the constitutional protection of privacy and dignity that follows the *Puttaswamy* line. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the bench's directions, and its relationship with the broader 'right to be forgotten' jurisprudence.
Section 482 of the BNSS replaced Section 438 of the CrPC on 1 July 2024, but did so without reproducing the statutory guiding factors — nature of accusation, antecedents, possibility of fleeing — that the CrPC had attached. A reading of the Chhattisgarh High Court's diagnosis of what this means for the anticipatory-bail discretion, and how trial courts and the bar should approach the post-BNSS framework.
Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita criminalises sexual intercourse obtained by deceitful means — including a false promise to marry. A lawyer's PIL before the Kerala High Court argues that the provision violates Articles 14, 15(1), 19(1)(a) and 21 — that it presupposes male-only power, fails to extend protection to the LGBTQIA+ community, and treats women as objects of patriarchal protection rather than autonomous adults. The High Court has issued notice to the Centre. A digest of the section, the constitutional arguments, and what the challenge will turn on.
A 74-year-old man, diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, was facing prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Justice K. Babu of the Kerala High Court held that the wider protection in the BNSS for accused suffering from intellectual disability — including dementia — applies retrospectively to proceedings initiated before 1 July 2024. A digest of the doctrinal point, the BNSS / CrPC comparison, and its reach.