On 10 January 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice N.V. Ramana — hearing challenges to the communications shutdown imposed on Jammu and Kashmir after the August 2019 abrogation of Article 370 — held that the freedom of speech and the freedom to practise trade and profession over the internet are protected under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution; that restrictions on those freedoms must satisfy a four-step proportionality test imported from Puttaswamy; that suspension orders under the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services Rules 2017 must be published and subjected to mandatory periodic review; and that Section 144 CrPC cannot be deployed to suppress legitimate dissent. The companion judgment in Ghulam Nabi Azad v. Union of India laid down the operative directions on Section 144.
On 11 January 2007, a nine-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that any law inserted into the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution after 24 April 1973 — the date of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment — is open to judicial scrutiny on the ground that it violates the basic structure or the Fundamental Rights forming part of the basic structure. The judgment closes the doctrinal loop that Kesavananda had opened: the Ninth Schedule cannot operate as a constitutional refuge from the basic structure doctrine.
On 24 April 1973, a 13-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — the largest ever assembled in Indian constitutional adjudication — held by a 7:6 majority that Parliament's amending power under Article 368 does not extend to altering the basic structure of the Constitution. The petition had begun as a religious-property challenge by the head of the Edneer Mutt; it ended as the most consequential constitutional ruling in the Republic's history. A digest of the bench, the line-up of opinions, the doctrinal contribution that has since governed every constitutional amendment, and the cases that have applied it.
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 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 31 July 1980, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that Sections 4 and 55 of the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 — the provisions that had purported to give the Directive Principles overriding priority over the Fundamental Rights and to immunise Article 368 amendments from judicial review — were unconstitutional. The judgment is the operative authority on the harmony between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles, on the limits of Parliament's amending power, and on judicial review as part of the basic structure. A digest of the bench, the doctrine, and the constitutional arc.
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.
On 10 July 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench held in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation that the right to life under Article 21 includes the right to livelihood — because no person can live without the means of living. The Bench was hearing a petition by pavement dwellers in Bombay challenging their eviction under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act, 1888. The petitioners ultimately did not succeed in vacating the eviction architecture, but the doctrinal contribution — that livelihood is part of Article 21 — has shaped four decades of socio-economic-rights jurisprudence.
On 12 August 2005 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in P.A. Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra, refined T.M.A. Pai (2002) on the four-fold typology of educational institutions and held that the State cannot impose reservation or admission quotas on private unaided professional institutions — minority or non-minority. Chief Justice Lahoti's unanimous judgment endorsed common entrance testing, retained the Islamic Academy regulatory-committee model for fees in an interim role, disapproved Islamic Academy's directions on State-percentage quotas in unaided institutions, and held that Article 29(2) does not override Article 30(1) in minority unaided institutions — vindicating the partial dissent of Quadri J and Ruma Pal J in T.M.A. Pai. The 93rd Constitutional Amendment Act 2005, inserting Article 15(5), was Parliament's direct legislative response.
On 30 July 1992 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka read the right to education out of Article 21 read with the Directive Principles in Articles 38, 39, 41 and 45 and struck down capitation fees in professional colleges. Seven months later, on 4 February 1993, a five-judge Constitution Bench in Unni Krishnan v. State of A.P. refined and re-stated the right — bifurcating its content so that free and compulsory education up to the age of fourteen became enforceable as a fundamental right (later codified as Article 21A by the 86th Amendment) while education beyond that age remained subject to the State's economic capacity. The Bench also imposed the free-seats / payment-seats scheme on private unaided professional institutions and capped capitation fees as unconstitutional. The combined two-step articulation set the doctrinal frame from which the 86th Amendment (2002), the RTE Act 2009, Society for Unaided Private Schools (2012) and Pramati (2014) all proceeded.
On 10 February 1970, an eleven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court struck down the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1969 by a ten-to-one majority. Justice J.C. Shah's majority judgment did three doctrinally distinct things: it read Article 31(2) compensation as a 'just equivalent', it replaced the object/subject test with an effect test, and it overruled A.K. Gopalan's silo theory of fundamental rights — the analytical move that, eight years later, made the golden triangle of Maneka Gandhi possible.
On 31 October 2002 an eleven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in T.M.A. Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka, comprehensively re-stated the law on educational institutions in India — recognising the right to establish and administer an institution as an occupation under Article 19(1)(g), settling the State-wise determination of minority status, drawing the four-fold aided/unaided × minority/non-minority typology that still governs the field, overruling the free-seats/payment-seats scheme of Unni Krishnan as applied to private unaided institutions, and reading down the rigid 50% cap of St. Stephen's College on minority preference. A close reading of Chief Justice Kirpal's majority, the five separate opinions, the partial dissents of Quadri J and Ruma Pal J on the Article 29(2)/30(1) interaction, and the doctrinal arc through Islamic Academy, Inamdar, the 93rd Amendment and the RTE Act.
On 18 December 1997 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice J.S. Verma, hearing the Jain hawala public interest litigation, issued a set of structural directions to insulate the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate from executive interference. The judgment fixed a two-year tenure for the CBI Director, gave the Central Vigilance Commission statutory status, struck down the 'Single Directive', and operationalised continuing mandamus as a tool of monitored investigation. It is the foundational case in modern Indian PIL practice.
How a passport-impoundment order led a seven-judge Bench to overrule Gopalan, fuse Articles 14, 19 and 21 into the golden triangle, and import substantive fairness into Indian constitutional law — the most consequential constitutional ruling of the post-Emergency era.
On 24 August 2017, a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held — without dissent, in 547 pages across six opinions — that the right to privacy is protected as a fundamental right under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The judgment overruled M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) in significant part, and supplied the three-prong proportionality test for state action affecting privacy. A close digest.