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).
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
Valkya Editorial··6 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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 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.
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 8 November 2024, a five-judge bench held that unilateral arbitrator-appointment clauses in public-private contracts violate Article 14, overruling CORE I (2020).
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 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.
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 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 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 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.
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 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.