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Supreme Court Data Portal

History of Constitution Benches

Under Article 145(3) of the Constitution, matters ‘involving a ­substantial question of law as to the interpretation of the Constitution’ are required to be decided by a minimum of five judges. These benches of the Supreme Court, often involving five, seven or nine judges, are called Constitution Benches.

Over the course of India’s history, these Constitution Benches have settled key questions involving individual rights and separation of powers thereby fundamentally shaping India’s rule of law framework. Some key issues such as the immutable nature of the fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution (Kesavananda Bharti v State of Kerala), limitation on the imposition of President’s Rule (S.R. Bommai v Union of India), clarifications on the law on personal liberties (Maneka Gandhi v Union of India) and deciding how territorial boundaries of India’s states should be demarcated (In re: Berubari Union) have been decided by Constitution Benches.

In the recent past too, they have been the harbinger of progressive change. Some of these landmark cases involve the decriminalisation of homosexuality (Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India), the declaration of the right to privacy as a fundamental right (Justice (Retd.) K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India) and the declaration of the ban on women of all ages from entering the Sabarimala temple as violative of their fundamental rights (Indian Young Lawyers Association v State of Kerala).

Previous research on Constitution Benches

While a significant amount of literature has been individually published about the jurisprudence these landmark cases helped create, empirical research on the functioning of these benches is few and far between. Recognising this lacuna, Nick Robinson and others conducted a study, a decade ago, examining all the constitution benches that had been set up since India’s independence until the end of 2009. The research studied voting patterns, the length of judgments, foreign citations and winning party among others. In the recent past, shorter pieces that examine the judgments delivered by these benches have also been published. There is also an ongoing project which studies the Supreme Court, which in its research also touches upon constitution benches. However, none of the above studies comprehensively examine all the cases pending before these benches or conduct an analysis of the associated aggregate statistics. This Constitution Bench Pendency Project is an attempt to plug this gap.

Pendency before the Constitution Bench

As a part of the process of consolidating the cases before it, the Supreme Court now regularly publishes statistics on the number of pending cases, including the number of pending constitution bench cases. These numbers are also bifurcated into the number of main and connected matters. The itemised list on the other hand, is available at the terminal cause list published on the website. Unfortunately however, during the course of our research we found that the list of cases on the terminal causelist fluctuated sporadically without any of the missing cases being heard in court. To ensure a fixity and authority in numbers, we filed an RTI application with the Supreme Court. The results in the present portal reflect the cases pending before the Supreme Court as on 17 November 2022. However, cases disposed of till 7 November, 2022 have been excluded from the dataset. A culmination of this exercise found that there are 45 main constitution bench matters pending before the Supreme Court. Since quite often, one case might dispose of multiple connected matters, a total of 612 cases are pending before these benches.

The JALDI Constitution Bench Tracker

The present tracker examines these cases and hopes to provide the user an in-depth understanding of each of these cases in an accessible form. For every case, the portal explainsthe timelines of events and orders, information on facts, questions of law, arguments, precedents and legislations under challenge. The further readings section hopes to act as a resource for those individuals looking to explore these cases in even more detail. The portal also charts the tagged matters and the pendencies. Since the research mentioned above has found that the number of these benches has consistently dwindled over time, we hope that this portal highlights the need for this particular aspect of the Supreme Court’s pendency to be addressed with gravity. We think that these cases require special emphasis since they involve critical questions of law that only the Supreme Court in its judgment and eminence can resolve.

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Acknowledgments

A large team worked to turn the Constitution Bench Pendency Project (“Project”) into a reality. Prashant Reddy T. (former Lead, Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India Initiative (JALDI) at Vidhi) and Nayantara Vohra (former Associate Fellow, JALDI) were part of the initial stages of this project including scoping the cases from the terminal list and collating the orders from the Supreme Court website. 

Apoorva (Research Fellow) and Vaidehi Misra (Senior Resident Fellow), under the guidance of Deepika Kinhal (Team Lead and Senior Resident Fellow) led the project in conceptualising and designing the process for creating summaries of these cases. 

Along with them, Aditya Ranjan and Shreya Tripathy (Research Fellows) and Reshma Sekhar (Senior Resident Fellow) helped review the cases that were summarised by the Kautilya Fellows. Vidhi’s Kautilya Society chapters in various law schools across the country are designed to work both independently as well as with Vidhi researchers on real-world research projects.

The following Kautilya Fellows were instrumental to the preparation of this project and the JALDI team would like to thank them for their immense contribution. They are: Abin Thomas Alex, Adhipatya Singh, Akanksha Yadav, Amrashaa Singh, Ankita Gupta, Anukriti Randev, Arjun Butani, Prajwal Venkatesh, Sanskruti Yagnik, Shivani Jaideep Karnik and Soumya Jain. Sanjeev Gumpenapalli, an intern at Vidhi Karnataka also assisted in the research.

Naxcent has helped design and execute our ideas into the format of the Portal. Finally, the JALDI team would like to thank ATECF and the Tree of Life Foundation for the support and grant under which this Project has been funded. 


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Raw Case Summaries

Case Link to Summary
Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association
Mineral Area Development Authority etc. v. M/S Steel Authority of India
Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra
State of Uttar Pradesh v. M/s. Lalta Prasad Vaish
State of Uttar Pradesh v. Jai Bir Singh
Aligarh Muslim University v. Naresh Agarwal
Arjun Flour Mills v. State of Orissa
N. Ravi v. Speaker, Legislative Assembly, Chennai
Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Limited
The State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh
Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India
Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India, Ministry of Law and Justice Secretary
Ashok Kumar Jain v. Union of India
Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. Union of India
Assam Public Works v. Union of India
Bar Council of India v. Bonnie Foi Law College
C.B.I. v. Dr. R.R. Kishore
Central Board of Dawoodi Bohra Community v. State of Maharashtra
Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India
Karmanya Singh Sareen v. Union of India
Kaushal Kishore v. State of Uttar Pradesh
M/s Shanti Fragrances v. Union of India
Mukesh Kumar v. V. K. Singh
Pyare Lal v. State of Haryana
Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan
Sita Soren v. Union of India
State of Andhra Pradesh v. B. Archana Reddy
State of Punjab v. Sahil Mittal
State of West Bengal v. Paschim Banga BK Samity
Sukhpal Singh Khaira v. State of Punjab
Suvarna Paka Jagga Rao v. Chebrolu Leela Prasad Rao
Tej Prakash Pathak v. Rajasthan High Court
Union of India v. Union Carbide Corporation
Union of India v. Preeti Agarwal
Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India


Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 23/2016

Timeline

  1. Date of institution of the Writ Petition
  2. Date for reference to a five judge bench
  3. Last date of hearing
    Current Status:Pending constitution of a five judge bench to hear the matter.

Bench Composition

Bench Status

Last listed before
Hon’ble Justice A. M. Khanwilkar
Hon’ble Justice Dinesh Maheshwari
Hon’ble Justice C. T. Ravikumar
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Hon’ble Justice A. M. Khanwilkar

  • Justice A. M. Khanwilkar was born on 30th July 1957, Pune, India.
  • He did B.Com from Mulund College of Commerce, Mumbai and L.L.B. from K.C. Law College, Mumbai.
  • He was enrolled as Advocate on 10th February, 1982.
  • He was appointed as Additional Judge of the Bombay High Court on 29th March, 2000 and confirmed as permanent Judge on 8th April, 2002.
  • He was appointed as Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh on 4th April, 2013. Thereafter, he was appointed as Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court on 24th November, 2013.
  • Elevated as Judge of Supreme Court of India and assumed charge on May 13, 2016.

Hon’ble Justice Dinesh Maheshwari

  • Born on 15th May, 1958 at Udaipur (Rajasthan).
  • Hails from lawyers' lineage - grandfather late Shri Jagannath Kahalya practiced mainly at Begun, District Chittorgarh and father late Shri R.C. Maheshwari was a renowned civil side lawyer at Jodhpur.
  • Completed B.Sc.(Hons.) in physics from Maharaja's College, Rajasthan University, Jaipur in the year 1977 and LL.B. from Jodhpur University in the year 1980. Enrolled as an Advocate with Bar Council of Rajasthan on 08th March, 1981.
  • Practised on original and appellate sides before Rajasthan High Court and its subordinate Courts. Mainly dealt with Civil and Constitutional matters. Served as counsel for Revenue and Excise Departments of Government of Rajasthan as also several local bodies and corporations. Had also been co-opted member on various disciplinary committees of the Bar Council of Rajasthan.
  • Took oath as Judge of Rajasthan High Court on 2nd September, 2004. Served as Chairman of Rajasthan State Judicial Academy and as Administrative Judge of Rajasthan High Court.
  • Transferred to Allahabad High Court and took oath on 19th July, 2014. Functioned as Senior Judge, Lucknow from 3rd March, 2015
  • Took oath as Chief Justice of the High Court of Meghalaya on the 24th February 2016 and then, as Chief Justice of High Court of Karnataka on 12th February 2018
  • Took oath as Judge, Supreme Court of India on 18th January, 2019.

Hon’ble Justice C. T. Ravikumar

  • C.T. Ravikumar was born on 06.01.1960 in Peermadu, Kerala
  • He Graduated in Zoology from Bishop Moore College, Mavelikara and obtained an LL.B degree from Government Law College, Calicut.
  • He enrolled as an Advocate with the Bar Council of Kerala on 12.07.1986, commenced his practice at Mavelikara Courts, and later shifted to Kerala High Court.
  • From 1996 to 2001, served as Government Pleader and 2006 appointed as Senior Government Pleader and later appointed as Special Government Pleader in the High Court of Kerala.
  • He was appointed as Additional Judge of the High Court of Kerala on 05.01.2009 and a permanent judge on 15.12.2010.
  • In High Court of Kerala served as President of Kerala Judicial Academy and as Executive Chairman of Kerala State Legal Service Authority. Took oath as a judge, Supreme Court of India on 31.08.2021

Background

The present matter relates to the legality of the traditional sport of Jallikattu.

In 2006, the Madras High Court banned the sport, stating that it was in violation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

In 2009, the Tamil Nadu government passed the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, which, while permitting the conduct of the sport, issued guidelines that organisers of Jallikattu had to adhere to.

In 2011, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, through a notification added bulls to its list of animals that could not be trained or exhibited as performing animals.

In 2014, the Supreme Court, in Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja [(2014) 7 SCC 547] banned Jallikattu and struck down the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009 on the ground that it was repugnant to the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 (and therefore violative of Art. 254(1)).

In 2016, the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change issued a new notification which again held that certain animals (including bulls) could not be trained or exhibited as performing animals. However, it carved out an exception for events such as Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and bullock cart races that are held as part of custom in other parts of the country. Certain conditions were imposed so as to ensure that “no unnecessary pain or suffering is inflicted” in the conduct of Jallikattu. This had the effect of re-permitting Jallikattu. This notification was challenged by the petitioners.

While the matter was being heard, the notification was withdrawn and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act, 2017 was passed, which effectively exempted the application of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act to Jallikattu.

The petitioners challenged this Act as well, and the Supreme Court after hearing the matter felt that there were substantial questions relating to the interpretation of the Constitution and referred the matter to a Constitution Bench.

Questions of law

1

Is the Tamil Nadu Amendment Act referable, in pith and substance, to Entry 17, List III of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India, or does it further and perpetuate cruelty to animals; and can it, therefore, be said to be a measure of prevention of cruelty to animals? Is it colourable legislation which does not relate to any Entry in the State List or Entry 17 of the Concurrent List?

2

The Tamil Nadu Amendment Act states that it is to preserve the cultural heritage of the State of Tamil Nadu. Can the impugned Tamil Nadu Amendment Act be stated to be part of the cultural heritage of the people of the State of Tamil Nadu so as to receive the protection of Article 29 of the Constitution of India?

3

Is the Tamil Nadu Amendment Act, in pith and substance, to ensure the survival and well-being of the native breed of bulls? Is the Act, in pith and substance, relatable to Article 48 of the Constitution of India?

4

Is the Tamil Nadu Amendment Act contrary to Articles 51A(g) and 51A(h), of the Constitution of India? Could it be said, therefore, to be unreasonable and violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution?

5

Is the impugned Tamil Nadu Amendment Act directly contrary to the judgment in A.Nagaraja (supra), and the review judgment dated 16th November, 2016 in the aforesaid case, and whether the defects pointed out in the aforesaid two judgments could be said to have been overcome by the Tamil Nadu Legislature by enacting the impugned Tamil Nadu Amendment Act?
Petitioner’s Arguments
  • The Petitioners argued that a binding judgment of a court cannot be directly annulled by an Act of the Legislature. The 2017 Amendment Act, by permitting Jallikattu, when the Supreme Court had explicitly banned it in A. Nagaraja, had done exactly this and could therefore not be sustained.
  • That the 2017 Amendment Act has not altered the basis on which the decision in A. Nagaraja was made, namely that Jallikattu was violative of several provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and Art. 21 and Art. 51A(g). It had merely created exceptions to the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, that the conduct of Jallikattu was found to violate (by inserting s. 3(2), s. 11(3)(f), the proviso to s. 22, s. 27(c) and s. 28 A to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act).
  • That the 2017 Amendment Act, by merely creating exceptions in favour of Jallikattu to permit it, without addressing the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act that Jallikattu was found to be violative of (Ss. 3, 11 and 22) in itself violated these sections of the Act.
  • That according to the A. Nagaraja judgment, animals were entitled to lead their life with honour and dignity, and the 2017 Act by permitting Jallikattu, a sport which inflicted unnecessary pain and torture on bulls deprived bulls of a dignified life
  • That Art.21 must be given a broad interpretation and animals should be brought within the meaning of ‘person’ under the Article in furtherance of the previous argument.
  • That the Amendment Act, by allowing Jallikattu which involved unnecessarily provoking the animal, was violative of Art. 51A (g).
Respondent’s Arguments
  • That a proper reading of the instructions issued by the court in A. Nagaraja indicates that the Court had not prohibited Jallikattu altogether, but merely tried to ensure that no cruelty was inflicted upon the bulls. The guidelines issued by the Government through the notifications that organisers of Jallikattu had to adhere to, created safeguards against harm being inflicted on bulls.

  • That Jallikattu has been carried out for centuries in the state of Tamil Nadu, a fact also recognised in A. Nagaraja, and a prohibition would be denying the perpetuation of an activity that is part of their culture.

  • That Jallikattu is a socio-religious festival not merely for entertainment, and the beliefs of the pastoral communities warrant protection under Art. 25.

  • That the mere fact that there had been incidents of violation of regulations could not sustain a blanket ban on Jallikattu since when conducted in accordance with the guidelines, Jallikattu was not in contravention of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Court's reasoning

While the referral order of the Supreme Court discusses the background of the issues at hand and frames questions that have to be referred to the Constitution Bench, it does not provide detailed reasoning for why this particular case had to be referred to a larger bench.
After hearing arguments, the Apex Court was of the view that the writ petitions involved substantial questions pertaining to the interpretation of the Constitution which needed to be authoritatively pronounced upon by a Constitution Bench, and hence referred the matter.

Sr No. Cause Title Case No. Date of Institution Date of Tagging Pending For*

1.

Compassion Unlimited Plus Action v. Union of India through Secretary Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change

W.P.(C) No. 24/2016 


Diary No. 1212/2016

11-01-2016 

NA

2.

Gauri Maulekhi v. Union of India Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change

W.P.(C) No. 25/2016 


Diary No. 1214/2016

11-01-2016

NA

3.

People For Ethical Treatment of Animals India v. Union of India Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through the Secretary

W.P.(C) No. 26/2016


Diary No. 1217/2016

11-01-2016

NA

4.

Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 27/2016


Diary No. 1380/2016

11-01-2016

NA

5.

Animal Equality v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 88/2016


Diary No. 3368/2016

28-01-2016

Tagged to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action v. Union of India through Secretary Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 29-02-2016 which is tagged to the main matter.

6.

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India v. State of Tamil Nadu

W.P.(C) No. 1011/2017  


Diary No. 19963/2017

06-07-2017

Tagged to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action v. Union of India through Secretary Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 06-11-2017 which is tagged to the main matter.

7.

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India v. State of Maharashtra

W.P.(C) No. 1059/2017  


Diary No. 30554/2017

22-09-2017

Tagged to People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India v. State of Tamil Nadu on 13-11-2017

8.

Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 10/2018 


Diary No. 36995/2017 

16-11-2017

19-01-2018

9.

Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 6/2018  


Diary No. 36984/2017

16-11-2017

14-01-2019

10.

Vikramsinh Nivrutti Bhosale v. State of Maharashtra

SLP(C) No. 003528/2018 


Diary No. 37267/2017 

20-11-2017

11-12-2017

11.

N.G. Jayasimha v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 1193/2017  


Diary No. 39154/2017

01-12-2017 

12-12-2017

12.

Vikramsinh Nivrutti Bhosale v. Union of India

W.P.(C) No. 1188/2017


Diary No. 39358/2017 

04-12-2017

11-12-2017

13.

State of Maharashtra v. Ajay Marathe

SLP(C) No. 3526-3527/2018


Diary No. 39253/2017

04-12-2017

11-12-2017

14.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India v. State of Karnataka

W.P.(C) No. 1152/2018


Diary No. 34162/2018  

12-09-2018

Tagged to People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India v. State of Maharashtra on 07-12-2018. 

15.

Ajay Marathe v. State of Maharashtra 

T.C.(C) No. 60/2021 


Diary No. 30449/2021

08-12-2021

15-12-2021 

* as of