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.
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 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.