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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.