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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.