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 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 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.